


Under Pressure

by bluedenimdress



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Bandits & Outlaws, F/M, Fluff, Kabooms, Lies, Serious Injuries, Slow Burn, no smut this time, old crush, potty mouth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-26
Updated: 2018-09-23
Packaged: 2019-02-07 05:43:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 47,927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12834546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluedenimdress/pseuds/bluedenimdress
Summary: Liz was a small town girl on Route 66, but when McCree breezes through after Overwatch has dismantled, she decides she wants a different life, even if it means tagging along with a couple outlaw junkers bent on leaving a trail of mayhem and destruction in their wake.





	1. Misirlou

**Author's Note:**

> Been a looong time since I posted a new fic. I don't know how welcome OC's are in the Overwatch community, but at least I finally wrote something that's not in first person. I found Overwatch lore to be a bit patchy and sparse in comparison to Fallout, but I did my best. I have much more written and everything outlined, so updates shouldn't take too awfully long. Shout out to NuclearMu5hroom and Mrs_Nicole for helping me out whenever I got stuck.

Jesse McCree was a household name on Route 66.  It was his stomping grounds when he was a member of the Deadlock Gang, and anyone who didn’t know him back then knew who he was once he became a Blackwatch agent.  But Liz knew him before all of that.  She had kept tabs on him ever since they had first met back when he used to come in her father’s diner regularly. 

They would both agree she was still just a kid back then, but there’s no telling someone that age what love is.  Her heart broke when Overwatch came and infiltrated the Deadlock Gang, taking Jesse away from her.  Her daily visits from him ended, and it seemed like her childhood did, too, thrusting her into reality.  

She never willingly adjusted.  These days, she was still pretty much the same obstinate, angsty person.  She even looked the same.  Her hips had spread some, and her skin was tanned from too many smoke breaks in the Southwest sun, but she still hung onto the same over-sized sunglasses and untamed chestnut hair, frozen in time on a baby face.

_“Exactly how does one get into Overwatch?”_

_“Here I am trying to get out and you want in?”_

_Liz laughed McCree’s comment off while clearing his empty plate from the diner table_. 

But she knew Overwatch didn’t exist anymore, and here he was again.  The possibilities had her a little spacey.

The cowboy brought a cigar to his lips and pulled a flame toward it, tugging the spark to the end.  “When you do that, I dunno whether to tip you or the waitress.”

“Huh?”

The deliberate throat-clearing beside her of Brigette, his actual server, brought Liz back to the present.  She looked down at the plate stacked with used napkins and empty condiment wrappers in her hand and passed them to Brigette with a grin.  “Tip _her_ , of course.  I’m here of my own volition.”

“You don’t have to tell me twice, darlin’.  I’ve known you long enough.”

Liz thought about just how many years that was and began to rub her hands in the front of her apron.  They didn’t have anything on them.  It was just a nervous habit from working in the kitchen.  “So… since you-know-what has disbanded, are you back to stay this time?”

“What are you talkin’ about?  The Deadlock Gang?”

“No.”  She leaned in close to whisper, and was nearly bewitched by his scent - that earthy masculine aroma of desert sweat and tobacco.  “Blackwatch.”

“Heh, it ain’t no secret anymore, Liz.  You don’t have to be all cagey.”

She knew that, but she didn’t mind using it as a flimsy excuse to be in his personal space. 

Like a game of chicken, he leaned more into the intimate little bubble Liz had created.  “And let’s get one thing straight.”  The cool placidity in his deep drawl almost completely overshadowed their conversation.  “I left Blackwatch before it broke up.”

A shiver shot down Liz’s spine as the warmth of his breath brushed across her ear. 

He reclined, crossing his cowboy boots in the empty booth across from him.  “I’m afraid I’m just passin’ through.  Got my eye out for a couple Aussie junkers.”

“The same two with the $25 million bounty I saw on TV?”

“That’d be them.” 

Her eyes faded into skepticism.  “You a bounty hunter now?”  
  
“Hmm.”  Despite his face being somewhat shadowed by his hat, she could tell the gears in his head were turning by the slow drag of his cigar.  “Something like that.”

“Don’t you have your own bounty?  How does that work when you go to turn ‘em in?” she chided.  “Do they just check it against yours and give you the difference?”

“Not when I’m turning them over to some other agency.  More importantly, they have something in their possession I’d like to get my hands on.” 

“Like what, exactly?”

“I can’t tell ya that.”

“Why?  Don’t ya know what it is you want?” she teased.

“I’m sure we all would like to know what we want.  Would make life a helluva lot easier.”  They both chuckled, but McCree’s faded first.  “All joking aside, you haven’t seen them ‘round here, have ya?”

“Wish I could say I had.”  Seriously.  Anything she could do to get him to stay longer, she would.  “Besides, if I had, do ya really think I’d still be working in this grease shack?”

A smirk spread over Jesse McCree’s sun-kissed, stubbly cheek. “Sure ya would.”

“What?  Am I that much of a fixture here?”  Her arms crossed in mock defense. 

“You oughtta be.  Your cooking is the reason I keep coming back.”

“Oh, quit!  I’m not a good cook, I’m just fast.”

“You’re a better cook than me.”

“That’s cause you ain’t a cook.”

“Well, I don’t need to be.  I got you, don’t I?”

Just as her face began to flush, a shrill shriek came from the very waitress whose table she had been monopolizing.  “Lizard!  I put in the order for that three-top ten minutes ago!  You gonna get started on that or what?!”

Her body jerked at the call.  “Yeah, don’t lose your damn panties!” 

McCree’s laugh drew her attention back to him.  “You still let these old biddies call you ‘Lizard’?”

“Not like I have a choice.”  She shot a worrisome glance over her shoulder at the pass-thru window where Brigette was waiting impatiently.  “Hey, lemme go take care of this order real quick, and I’ll be right back, k?”

A slight grimace replaced his confident smirk.  “I can’t make you any promises, darlin’.  I really need to get going.”

In a panic, Liz was already scurrying back to the kitchen. 

Two burgers and a club.

Her internal timer started counting down from six minutes – her personal goal for every order.  _Grab two patties, slap ‘em on the flat top, weight ‘em… so they cook faster.  Butter buns, face down on flat top.  Drop fries._

She peeked her eyes over the ledge of the pass-thru window.  McCree was still savoring that cigar.

_Gather sandwich meats, pull buns from the flat top and dress them.  Cut club, arrange it, buns on plates._

Three minutes, and McCree was putting out his smoke. 

_C’mon c’mon c’mon….Pull fries up.  Shake the basket, most of the grease off?  Good.  Plate ‘em, check burgers…not quite done…_

Another quick glance out into front of house, and she saw McCree slipping a couple bucks between the salt and pepper shakers.

 _Shit shit shit… Press ‘em!  Press the fucking patties._  
She watched with misplaced disdain as all the flavorful juices drained off the burgers and evaporated on the griddle at the pressure she put on the weights.  The scalding steam wafted up across her face, and having long ago developed an immunity to immense heat, she was unfazed by it.

_Close enough! Aaand plated!_

She slid the plates down the ledge of the window and slapped the bell.

 _Ding!_

“Order up, table 7!”

Rounding the corner to the dining room, as she stabbed the ticket on the check spindle, she noticed his booth had already been abandoned, but this didn’t deter her.  She rushed out the front doors anyhow, hoping to catch him in the parking lot, but it was too late.  He was gone in a cloud of dust dissipating over the highway on the western horizon, obscuring where the sun was already beginning to hang low.

Her whole posture wilted as her gaze sank.  _Who knows when he’ll be back again?_ She caught sight of the rest of the cigar he must have dropped, and at the mere suggestion of it, began instinctively reaching into the pocket of her worn-out, cut-off denim shorts for her own smokes as she returned to the diner.

She bumped shoulders with the three unhappy patrons she had just cooked for already on their way out, and she pushed past them back into the diner.  Brigette was nagging at her about paradoxically dry, undercooked burgers, but Liz didn’t even acknowledge her as she continued drifting to the kitchen, straight past the line and out the back door.  Her lighter hit the cigarette before she had made it outside again, leaving the door open behind her out of habit in case another order came in.

“Goddammit,” she breathed out with the smoke of her first drag, staring out into the rock mesas and cliffs in the distance dotted with small cacti and palms – the only visible sign of life for miles, albeit a weak one.  _What kinda existence is this?  Everything is so empty, and meaningless… This isn’t what I wanted for myself…_

“Lizard!”

“Stuff it!  I’m on break!”  She slammed the door shut with a forceful kick behind her.

Angry outbursts just come with the commercial kitchen territory, and since her parents had met each other working that very diner, she grew up around that.  Most old cooks know, especially in the kitchen, that even though everyone snaps and barks at each other all night, when the shift is over, everyone lets it go.  Have a drink and a smoke together, and you stumble out that door together - dirty, run ragged, and friends again.

But her mother had been long gone, and ever since her father fell ill a few years back, Liz started to channel her sadness deeper into that blood-boiling anger with no definitive let-go point.  His medical bills racked up in addition to all the business’s bills that weren’t getting paid every time they lost money from closing the doors again for another family emergency.  Being closed that much doesn’t exactly help retain customers either.  By the time her father had passed, there was no getting out from under the financial ruins and final expenses.  In the end, she lost the diner.

She felt so weak and powerless, but it was easier to function as a raging asshole than a depressed blob.  She figured she should probably just be grateful that the new owner wanted to keep her on as the main cook, but she wasn’t very thrilled about working for someone else.  Happiness apparently wasn’t in her cards. 

In fact, the last time she could remember being truly happy was before all of that, back when McCree and her dad were still around.  There was no bringing her dad back, she knew that.  But it felt good to know that McCree was still out there, thriving and kicking shit… still thinking about her…

She recalled how she used to count the hours between his flirtatious visits, hanging on his every word and reading deeply into everything he said and did.  She knew it made her look childish, but she didn’t care.  He loved the attention as much as she loved giving it.

The rest of the Deadlock Gang used to frequent the place too back then.  Bunch of dirty, swearing, rowdy punks, always plotting and scheming.  They’d come in hot and sweaty, kicking their filthy boots up, making a mess, and being loud.  Her father merely tolerated them because of their dangerous reputation, but she kinda missed them, too.   Their presence made things seem livelier, like she was one of them, and something exciting could happen at any moment.  But she’d trade the whole lot of them for Jesse McCree.  There was no one like him. 

_What if… there was a way I could bring him back…to stay…_

“Those two bounties,” she muttered under her breath.  “He must have had reason to believe they were in the area… unless he was just coming to see _me_ …”  She chuckled out loud at the idea’s ridiculousness, but deep down, it was nice to imagine it.

Suddenly, the back door swung open, almost slamming into her face if she hadn’t thrown her leg out and stopped it with the toe of her combat boot.  “For fuck’s sake, Brigette – “

“They’re here!”

The intense look in her coworker’s eyes told her she wasn’t talking about a large party or the health inspector.  “Who?”

“The two wanted guys from A Moment In Crime!”

She thumped her half-smoked cigarette into the dirt.  “You’re fucking with me.”

The waitress dropped her voice to a more discreet tone.  “I am 99% sure it’s them. Come see for yourself.”

In utter disbelief that the stars could align so perfectly, Liz flew past her for an eyeful from her perch at the pass-thru, and sure as shit, there they were, sitting at a booth like it was nothing. 

_Kismet._

The big one in the respirator was crammed in there so uncomfortably, his gut was draped over the table, and the small one had a squirrelly look in his eyes… and the unmistakable butt of McCree’s cigar dangling from his quivering, unstable smile.

Seeing her number one crush’s discarded cigar burning between someone else’s lips fanned that irrational fire smoldering in her.  Leaving Brigette still aghast in the kitchen, she charged to the booth and snatched the cigar from him in one perfectly clean motion.  She twisted the lit stogie between her calloused fingertips.  _What did A Moment In Crime say his name was?  Junkrat?_

He was repulsive.  A hunkered over, gangly amputee with a mechanical arm and a peg leg, wearing patched and singed camos.  He was covered in soot and light burns and was an unhealthy skinny - almost malnourished - but his upper body was harnessed with explosive canisters and inexplicably toned in dissonance with the rest of him.  Couldn’t have been more than 25 or so, but was missing asymmetrical patches of hair – a practically glowing blonde mess, but not as wild as his amber eyes.  Or the unsettling smile perpetually on his face.  Or that high-pitched laugh that had been echoing off the empty diner’s walls ever since they walked in. 

The other one was Roadhog, a 7-foot-plus, mountain of a man dressed like a biker, looking like some morbidly obese Mad Max villain with tattoos, studded leather, and a grey ponytail high up on his head.  He had half of a shredded-up tire across one shoulder, a vanity plate as a belt buckle, and bits of chain dangling here and there. His respirator was horrifyingly fashioned into a pig nose with some aftermarket stitches. A scrap gun and over-sized meat hook hung by his side, a combination of weapons that Liz never would have thought of on her own.

As if these observations alone weren’t enough to confirm their identities, the definitively Australian accent that poured from Junkrat’s mouth once he realized what had just happened put any other doubts to rest.  “Eh, what gives, mate?”

“You can’t smoke in here,” Liz asserted.

Taken aback, his eyes darted around at all the plastic ashtrays on every table.  He picked up the one lying in front of him.  “Then what is this?  A finger bowl?”

Without an iota of thought, she snatched that from him as well.  “An ashtray.”

His voice rollercoastered with melodic sarcasm.  “So why do you have ashtrays if this is a non-smoking establishment?”

“I didn’t say it was a non-smoking establishment.”  In her own personal and intentional imitation of McCree, she took a long, hard drag from the cigar, sucking it almost to its end until she felt its heat on her fingertips.    “I said _you_ can’t smoke in here.”

“I-i-i see!”  He placed his palms flat on the table.  The light clinking of metal sounded when his mech hand impacted, and black-painted nails showed through a fingerless glove on his remaining hand.  He began slowly pushing himself up, and his mammoth associate let out a wordless grumble.  Junkrat’s eyes narrowed, and his lips pouted out with corners drawn down in the most comical, unintimidating glare she had ever witnessed.  “So what’s this all about?  We got a problem or something?”

“Yeah.”  She mashed the rest of the cigar into the ashtray until it was extinguished and let it drop to the table as her eyes trailed up his form.  He was much taller than he initially seemed from the booth’s seat.  At least a foot taller than her.  “I have a problem with you smoking in here when you’ve got enough fireworks to blow up a small town strapped to your chest.”

“S’that so?”

Both foolhardy and stubborn, they stayed locked in that exaggerated glare with each other. 

He seemed like a mild annoyance at best with his cartoony joker act.  Used to the heavily-armed members of the Deadlock Gang hanging around, the weapons didn’t scare Liz a bit either.  She didn’t view them as dangerous at all really…

That is until his massive bodyguard snorted in apparent disapproval, followed by the first words he had spoken in her presence: 

“It’s bad for your health anyway, Rats.”

His voice was booming and thunderous, deep like the rumbling roar of some dark underworld god in stark contrast to the gentle advice of his words, and for the first time since this standoff started, Liz felt fear.  She tried her best to cover, to keep her hands steady and her eyes from widening in tell-tale.

She wasn’t sure if her weakness had shown through or if it was the interjection from his companion, but a smile softened the junker’s face, and he suddenly gave way to another manic laugh.  “Heh, not mine, mate.  I get a genetic pass.”  He slid back down into his seat, completely over the whole thing already.

_That was terrifying…_

Junkrat began to idly tap his metal fingers on the table.  “So.  What’s on the menu tonight?”

Rattled and still a little stunned, Liz shook her head.  “I’m not a waitress,” she replied distantly as she scanned the room for Brigette, not seeing her.

“So what, next you’re gonna tell me we can’t _eat_ in here either?”  His bushy blonde eyebrows began to slide downward once more as his itchy fingers lovingly caressed some kind of remote button hanging from his belt.  “Clearly you don’t know who you’re messing with.  Look, we don’t actually want any trouble… at the moment.”  He paused to giggle at his own statement.  “We just wanted some dinner.  When ol’ Hog here is hungry, it’s time to eat, okay?  So why don’t you just –“

“I said I’m not a waitress, alright?  I’m the cook.”  Liz’s brain was racing as she swung by a nearby table where Brigette had been rolling silverware earlier and grabbed a couple menus, dropping them in front of the agitated bounties without breaking her pace back to the kitchen.  “Here.  Someone will be with you in a moment,” she called over her shoulder to them.

When she pushed through the swinging doors to the back of house, she found Brigette on the store phone that hung on the wall.  Without hesitation, Liz brought her finger down on the hook, hanging it up.

“What the hell, Lizard!”

“Who were you calling?”

“A Moment In Crime, of course.”  Liz put a finger over her lips and shushed her as she began pushing her further toward the line, away from the phone.  Brigitte, confused by her reaction, followed along.  “What’s going on?”

Liz didn’t have a plan, but she knew she had to stop Brigette from calling the authorities if McCree was going to be able to turn them over to... whoever.   Brigette tried to reach for the phone again, and Liz instinctively pushed her into the wall.

“Hey, calm down!  I was going to split the reward with you.  No worries.”

Liz couldn’t care less about the money.  She hadn’t even thought about it.  “That’s not it.”

“Well what is it then?  We need to act fast before we miss our chance to –“

“I don’t think that’s them,” Liz blurted out unconvincingly.

Brigette leaned forward to look past her out the window at the two.  “But they have explosives and everything.”

Liz glanced behind her while simultaneously pushing her against the wall again, blocking her view.  “Oh my god, you’re right, Brigette!” she cried, changing her course of action midstream.

“Jesus, Lizard!  Why are you so weird all the time?!  Just let me make the call.”

“Absolutely, we should!  But first, go take their orders.”

“Have you lost your mind?!”

“You have to!  If you don’t treat them like regular customers, they’ll know something is up and leave.”

Brigette gasped.  “Good thinking!”

Liz reached into Brigette’s apron and grabbed her notepad, thrusting it into her hands.  “Go get them some drinks, and I’ll make the call, ok?”

As the waitress rushed off on her mission, Liz’s eyes frantically bounced around the kitchen. 

If only it were as simple as calling McCree, but she had never had his number.  He claimed he never had one.  It was probably a lie, but recognizing that didn’t magically make him reachable.  _What to do, what to do…_

Instincts and muscle memory had her pick up a butcher knife off the magnet strip over the cook line, and she stared down at it thoughtfully.  _What am I going to do with this?_

She let out a quiet, disturbed chuckle as she entertained the thought of stabbing Brigette.  She had never much cared for her, or most servers in general.  They’re whiny and demanding and always want _their_ customers to get special preference over everyone else’s.  And of all the servers that had worked there over the years, Brigette had always been a particularly aggravating thorn in her side.  But, yeah, no, she couldn’t do _that_.  She brushed the thought off as “call of the void” … _or whatever…_

Her eyes lit up as a more reasonable solution came to her.  Brigette had been trying to make the call on the store phone, so the battery was probably drained on her cell. 

_From spending too much goddamn time on social media, the narcissistic piece of..._

Liz poked her head around the corner at the drink station and found Brigette’s phone sitting there instead of being in her pocket.  Just to be sure, she pushed the button on the side, but the screen didn’t light up.  Pushing the power button did nothing as well.  All the proof she needed.

She turned back to the store’s phone behind her and pulled some of the wire out of the wall.  Once she had a good length of it out, she cut it with a quick, clean slice, and then neatly fed the severed end back into the hole.  After admiring her work for a second, she picked up the receiver and held it to her ear: no dial tone. 

_Perfect._

Now to get rid of Brigette.

_Stabby?_

She smirked to herself as she set the knife down.  “No, Liz.  No stabby.”

Just then, Brigette rounded the corner to the drink station.  She flipped a couple glasses right-side-up and began filling them with ice, shooting a look over at Liz while she poured their beverages.  “Did you get through?”

Liz made exaggerated doe eyes and slowly shook her head.  “The phone is dead,” she replied, handing the receiver to Brigette.

The waitress’s jaw dropped, and the receiver slipped from her fingers.  “Oh my god, is your phone out of minutes again?”

She nodded. 

“Dammit, Lizard!  How could you be?  It’s not like anyone calls _you_!”

Liz’s eye twitched as she suppressed the urge to grab the knife again.  “Just let me use yours real quick.”

“You can’t!  My battery is completely dead!”

“So just charge it for a few minutes.  It doesn’t need to be 100%.”

Brigette picked her phone up off the drink station in frustration and dramatically dropped it like a brick, accentuating its uselessness.  “I don’t have my charger with me!  Goddammit…”

“Well, run to the gas station and borrow their phone.”

“I got dropped off today!  Mark has the car.”

“So literally fucking run then!”

“No!  _You_ go!”

“I can’t!  I have to cook their food so they’ll stay, remember?”

“Fuck…. It’s like three and half miles away, Lizard…”

“We’re talking about $25 million dollars here, Brigette.”

“I know that, but what if they leave before I get there?”

“They won’t!  I’ll make sure of it, okay!  But you need to leave like five minutes ago.”

“Ok,” she whined in exasperation, untying her apron.  “Stall them as long as you can.”

As she darted out the backdoor, Liz called after her, “Hurry!”

She picked up the drinks Brigette had made and brought them out to the booth where the junkers were sitting.  On her way there, something caught her attention.  All of the ashtrays at all the other tables – every last one of them – were gone.  She placed the drinks in front of them and leaned on the table’s edge.  “Are you fucking serious?”

With a mock somber expression, Junkrat stared straight ahead at his partner.  “I dunno what you’re talking about, mate.”

“Where are all my ashtrays?”

He started to snicker, nudging Roadhog’s giant forearm that was resting on the table between them.  “Say it,” he hissed. 

Roadhog only grunted.

The squirrelly one sighed and turned to Liz, opening the flap on his messenger bag and revealing the nasty stash of unwashed ashtrays shoved inside.  “Ya mean these?” he goaded.

“Yeah, what the fuck are you gonna-“

“Say the thing,” he urged his companion again.  “It’ll be hysterical.”

“No,” he growled.

“Ah, you’re no fun!  I gotta do everything meself.”  He suddenly jumped up on top of the table, waving a grenade launcher around and shouting.  “Everybody be cool, this is robbery…!” 

Roadhog shook his head as he reached for his scrap gun and lumbered over to the front door, flipping the open sign to “closed”.

“…Any of you fuckin’ pricks move, and I’ll execute every mother fuckin’ last one of ya, ah hahaha-ha!”


	2. All Night Diner

Liz was not prepared in the least for this, and she was completely terrified, but despite having two guns pointed at her, she began to laugh.  She didn’t mean to, and she didn’t know why.  It just happened. 

Junkrat’s posture deflated and his expression fell into one of confusion.  “Why are _you_ laughing?” 

“I’m the only one here, ya know.  And there’s like next to nothing in the register.  What are you trying to accomplish here?”

Junkrat jabbed the end of the grenade launcher at her with uncertainty.

“And what are you gonna do with that?  Blow us all up?  Great plan, hot shot.”

Her smug demeanor shifted as he jumped down off the table and grabbed onto the fabric on her shoulder, forcefully ushering her towards the kitchen with the launcher still poised at her, occasionally pressing the cold steel into her back.  “Yeah, well, we didn’t come here with the intent to rob ya, you know, but we heard some of what you two were saying back there.  All we wanted was a nice, quiet meal, but you and that other bludger had to start scheming on us.”

Liz threw her arms in front of her to block the swinging doors from hitting her face as he shoved her through.  “No, no!  That’s not it at all!”

“Where is she?” he barked.  “Where’s the other girl?”

“She’s gone!  I sent her on a wild goose chase to get rid of her.”

“Hog!  Check out back!”  He brought Liz to a stop near the grill and craned his neck down so he was mere inches from her face.  “What do you mean ya got rid of her?”

“She’s the one who wanted to call the authorities.  Not me.  So I cut the line to the phone and sent her miles away on foot to use someone else’s.”

“Cut the line on what phone?  What are you talking about?”

“Right over there,” she said motioning towards the wall phone and then raising her hands in half-hearted surrender. 

Never taking his eyes of her, he reached for the receiver and held it to his ear.   He jammed on the hook a couple times and dropped it before pulling on the cord until the cut end came out of the wall.  He scrutinized the severed tip as though it was something truly mesmerizing.

“Her cell is dead, too.  She left it over there on the counter.”

His eyes scanned her with manic speed.  “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why did you do that?”

“…To help you, of course.”

“Why are you trying to help us?”

“Because…”  Her mind scrambled for anything to save herself at this point.  “Because I’ve seen you guys on tv.  I’m a big fan of your work.”

“Ahaha-hah!”  He doubled over in laughter, slapping his knee with his free hand.  Just then, Roadhog entered through the backdoor, locking the deadbolt behind him and pocketing the key.  “Hey, Roadie!  Get a loada this!  The Sheila says she’s a big fan of us.”

His cohort joined the dark symphony with his own horrid laugh that seemingly used all the air in the room, shaking his body, and Liz felt sick to her stomach.

Once their amusement tapered off, Junkrat closed in on her again, this time with Roadhog looming ominously behind him. “I gotta admit, you’ve been pretty entertaining tonight.”  His mouth curled into a hideous snarl.  “I’d hate ta hafta blow this place… literally.”

“So, what do you want from me?”

“It’s like I said, we just wanted some food.  So-o-o,” he grabbed a handful of raw, bloody ground meat from a nearby bowl and tossed it onto the flat top with a sizzle, “start cooking, mate.”  He turned away and began to hobble out of the kitchen, that peg leg of his punching the floor with every other step in a quick rhythm that matched his excessively high energy.  “And don’t try anything funny.  We’ll have our eye on ya.”

“Make mine a double,” Roadhog added with a snort before following back to the dining area. 

She just stared down at the griddle for a long moment before taking a spatula and flattening out the pile of ground beef into a patty.  She was forming another patty when she heard a loud banging out in the front of house.  She cautiously peered through the window to see Junkrat beating on the jukebox.

“Piece ah junk!”  He kept kicking and hitting it.  “What’s wrong with this thing?”

Against her better judgement, Liz walked to the front counter, immediately catching their attention.

He froze mid-kick and eyeballed her.  “What are you doing?”

“You have to put money in it,” she replied, deadpan, as she opened the register and dumped the drawer’s contents on the counter.  “Here, help yourselves.”

One of those bushy eyebrows arched upward as he took her up on her invitation.  “I knew that,” he retorted, scooping up  the cash.

She could hear him violently punching buttons as she returned to her station.  That crazed laugh of his rang out again.  “Heh, I’ve never heard this one, but with a name like that, it oughtta be good.” 

A moment later, she recognized the opening riff to a twentieth century song she had personally added to the jukebox, and she took a small comfort in hearing it, resuming cooking like it was any other night at work.  The song ended, and in the quiet between tracks, she heard snippets of their covert conversation.

“…Sombra….the thing….Mexico…”

_Sombra…That’s Spanish for shade…or shadow.  Something like that._

Junkrat suddenly clammed up when they noticed her watching from the window.  “What’s the hold up, Cookie?” he asked, taking a nonchalant sip of his drink.  “Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock….”

“My name’s _Liz_ ,” she told him rather matter-of-factly.

“Suuure, but you’re a cook, ain’t ya?  What’s the ETA on that food?”

“Soonish.”

“Get to it then!”

“It’s almost done.  What do you want on your burgers?”

“Everything,” Roadhog grumbled.

She turned back to her work.  “Will do.”

She was almost done plating their meal when she realized how all this was going to end.  If they didn’t kill her, at the very least she would end up tied up or something if she didn’t find some way to steer this outcome in a different direction.

And what were they saying about Mexico?  Jesse had headed off west.  If that’s where they were going, he wasn’t going to catch up to them.  They were going to get away, and all of this would be for nothing – just like everything else in her disappointing life.  If Jesse wasn’t such a distant, aloof bastard, all of this could have been avoided.  If he had just stayed a little longer like she asked…

Maybe if she could lure them with her to talk to some of the ex-Deadlock Gang members, they might know how to contact him before he got too far off.

Still pondering her next move, she brought their plates to the table and began to retreat back to the kitchen to work out the details of her vague plan.

Junkrat grabbed hold of her apron.  “Where are you going?”

“Back to work.”

He lightly tugged at the fabric.  “Naaah.  Take a break, have a seat.”

“Okaaay.”  She started to ease into the booth next to him, but another tug made her lose her footing and tumble on her ass into it.  She just sat there, stark stiff.

Roadhog had his mask resting on the top of his face and had already torn halfway through his burger, when Junkrat took his first bite.  “Not bad, Cookie.  Not bad.”

“Yeah, thanks.”

After a couple more bites, he set the rest of his burger on Roadhog’s plate and began picking at his fries.  “So, you’re our biggest fan, eh?”

“Well, I didn’t say –“

“Tell us all the things you like the most about us.”

Liz’s eyes fluttered back in her head for a moment as she tried to focus on the new task at hand.  Time to weave a tale.  “Ok,” she proclaimed, pulling out her cigarettes, “but first give me back one of the ashtrays.”

“Oh, so you can smoke, but I can’t?”

She lit one before answering.  “Do whatever you want.  I don’t give a fuck.”

He stared at her for a few moments, considering her response, before pulling one of the plastic ashtrays out of the bag and tossing it down on the table.  “Heh.  That’s more like it.”  It must have been a satisfactory answer.

She exhaled that first drag and started in on the ass-kissing.  “Well, there’s all the fire, explosion, destruction… chaos…”

Junkrat looked up dreamily.  “Mmm, so far so good.”

He was unstable, but he was surprisingly easy to butter up.  However she couldn’t get a good read on Roadhog even with his mask half off.  “All of that is fun in its own right, but the thing I think I admire most about you is…the freedom.”

The big guy perked up a little when she said that.

Junkrat had gotten hung up on a different word though.  “Ya hear that, Hog?  She _admires_ us!”

Roadhog made a little rumbling sound.  “Freedom, eh?”

“Well yeah, look at me!  I am an underpaid line cook in a shitty diner in the middle of nowhere!  I live in a little pull-behind trailer down the road!”

Junkrat almost seemed offended.  “What’s wrong with that?”

“Well, for starters, I don’t even have a car.  I can’t _pull_ it anywhere.  I am stuck here with nothing – no friends, no family, no future, nothing to look forward to.  And let me tell ya something…”  She tapped the ash off the end of her cigarette and leaned closer to them, as though she had some exciting secret to reveal.  “This place is boring as _shit_.  Nothing ever happens around here.”  She reclined back into the booth.  “It’s fucking depressing.” 

Junkrat sniffed, barely paying attention.  “Mm, yeah, that’d be right.” 

She didn’t even notice how badly that last bit missed the mark.  A pang of sadness had hit her as she realized that none of that was a lie.  Pushing the hair out of her face, she took another calming puff from her cigarette.  “But you guys?   You’re free.  You go where you want.  You do what you want.  The whole world is yours.  It doesn’t get much better than that.”

“Wow, you’re quite the optimist.  Maybe we oughtta keep you around as a cheerleader.”

“Would you really?”

“Heh, no.”

“So, what?  Are you just going to kill me?”

Junkrat looked up at his associate.  “Hey pig-face, how was the burger?”

With a mouthful of fries, his only response was a thumbs up.

“That’s quite the compliment coming from him.  Guess you passed the test, Cookie.”

“So… you’ll take me with you?”

“Take you with us?!  Why the hell would we do that?”

Liz couldn’t help feeling like this was a job interview.  “Well, you already know I can cook, so I’ll keep your friend well fed.”

Junkrat laughed, reaching across to Roadhog’s belly that was resting on the table and giving it a pat.  “That’s never been a problem in the past, mate.  You’re gonna hafta do better than that.”

She smothered her cigarette in the ashtray.  “I know a trick.  Wanna see?”

“Sure.”

She pulled out a pocket knife and unfolded it.  Spreading her hand out flat on the table, she began stabbing the spaces in between, effortlessly avoiding her fingers.  Each stab left a hefty gouge in the table, picking up speed with every cycle until Junkrat’s laugh returned.

“That’s pretty captivating, but also pretty useless.”

She spun the knife in her palm a couple times and flipped it shut before sliding it back in her pocket.  “ _That_ , yeah, but it was just a demonstration.  I’m pretty handy with a knife, amigo.”

“Really?” he asked with a grin.  “Then what happened there?”  He pointed to one of her right-hand fingers that was wooden from the top knuckle up.

“Oh, that.”  Liz took hold of the wood, popping it off and revealing the stub underneath.  “That’s a mistake you only make once.”

He began drumming his nimble, mech fingertips on the table again.  “Once?”

“Yeah.  When you lose an appendage due to your own clumsiness, you make damn sure you ‘git gud’ and it doesn’t happen again.”  Her eyes darted to his tapping fingers as she replaced her tiny prosthetic.  “Wouldn’t you agree?”

Suddenly self-conscious, he thrust his metal arm under his other in a defensive cross.  “Yeah well… I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”

She was running out of ideas.  “Did I hear you boys say you were heading to Mexico?”

Roadhog finished his burger and promptly returned his mask before Liz could catch a peek.  “Told you she was listening.”

“Hey, I didn’t mean to.  The music had –“

Junkrat’s forehead crumpled.  “We didn’t necessarily say we were _going_ to Mexico.”

“Well, if you don’t speak Spanish, I wouldn’t recommend it anyhow.”

He tightened his defensive arm cross.  “We’ve been to Mexico before.  I know enough Spanish to get by.”

“Mexico, America, where-the-fuck-ever you are, you’d be better off not talking to anyone!  You’re wanted men, for Christ’s sake!  You have a $25 million bounty on your heads!  That’s a lot of damn money.”

“Sure,” he agreed as though it were a point of pride.

“And I’ve heard things – things that I’m sure plenty of more influential people than me have heard.  If they’re willing to fork over that much for you, then whatever it is you have must be worth a lot more than that.”

This really got the junker’s attention.  He inched closer to Liz’s face and spoke with grave intimidation.  “What did you hear that we have, _mate_?”

She shrugged.  “ _That_ , I don’t know, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t someone somewhere who does.  I just know it’s very valuable.”

“So, is that what this is about?”  His restless fingers began inching toward his detonator again.  “You want my treasure?”

Roadhog grunted.

“ _Our_ treasure?” he corrected himself.

“Nope,” she asserted.  “If I was after fortune, that $25 mil would have been enough for me, but I couldn’t give a fuck less about wealth.”

Junkrat’s itchy digits eased up a little.  “What’s your end game, Cookie?”

“Freedom.  I want the freedom you guys have.”

“Yeah, you already said that.”

“I want out, and when I saw you two sitting in my diner, I knew this was the opportunity I’ve been waiting for.  I can be your liaison in public, travel the world with you… I’ve been here my whole life!  Can you believe I’ve never seen the ocean?”

He spread his arms over his head.  “Why would you want to when you’ve got all this beautiful desert around?”

Just then, a cop car pulled into the parking lot.  Roadhog drew his companion’s attention to it with a nod.  “Time to go, ‘Rats.”

Junkrat’s head swung around on high alert, and Liz noticed a bead of sweat rolling down his cheek.  “Dammit…”

Liz looked over her shoulder to see what the fuss was.  “Who, Officer Russell?  He comes in here every night for coffee and pie.  I can get him out of here, easy.”

Roadhog slapped Junkrat’s shoulder, jarring him sideways.  A knowing nod was exchanged between the two, and they darted up, Junkrat jumping clear over her.

She grabbed onto his wrist in one final desperate attempt to win him over.  “No, wait!  I can help!  Sombra!  You said something about –“

Junkrat froze.  His attention was back on her.  “You know where she is?!”

 _Sombra’s a person?_ “I –I have friends that can find her.”

“Suuure you do.”  He tossed a couple concussion mines to the floor, sending them sliding toward the front doors. 

Liz’s eyes followed the mines, and when they skid to a stop on the jamb, her gaze continued up the frame noticing wires sloppily draped on the trim and across the walls.  Thinking back on her six minute cook time – the longest time she left him unsupervised - she realized he must work as fast as she does.  She flung a hand toward the bomb job.  “You can’t just leave me here like this!”

Junkrat froze, his eyes following her gaze and settling on her, soaking in that frightened puppy-dog look she didn’t even mean to give him.  “Ffffuuuu –“

Roadhog was already on his way to the backdoor.  “Now, Rats!  We’re out of time!”

Junkrat bared his teeth in a growl.  “Don’t make me regret this, Cookie!”  He grabbed hold of her shoulder, pulling her out of the booth.  “C’mon, let’s go!”

Still gripping tightly onto her clothing, he rushed her out the back where Roadhog was already on their combination motorcycle/sidecar.  He revved it up a couple times, and Junkrat threw her onto the back behind his friend. 

“Hang on tight.  You’re riding bitch.”  As he jumped into the sidecar, those itchy fingers of his satisfyingly pressed down on the detonator it had been flirting with all night, and a loud boom shook the building.  Flames poofed upward, disappearing as quickly as they had appeared, leaving beind a soft amber glowing from the roof and through the rising debris.  The squad car’s flashing blue lights immediately began to strobe from around front, and Liz’s heart skipped a beat.  She threw her arms around Roadhog, and a moment later, they were pulling out onto the highway, tires squealing.

She looked around the bulky biker’s torso at the road gliding by.  Up ahead, she saw a lifeless body lying on the side of the road.  As they cruised past, she got a good enough look to confirm it was Brigette’s.  The sight burned itself into the back of her eyelids.

_Shit..._

She looked back one final time and saw Officer Russell gaining on them.  Her grip tightened around Roadhog just as he punched it in harder, almost giving her whiplash.

Junkrat raised his grenade launcher level with the edge of the sidecar and started firing behind them.  Explosion after explosion impacted all around the officer’s car until a close-hitting blast caused him to lose control and go spiraling off the road in a compact little blaze mushrooming up and illuminating the sanguine sky.  Further beyond him, Liz could see the fire quickly spreading through the dry sprigs of grass and brown bush.  If the rigged explosion didn’t do it, no doubt, the growing brush fire would reach the diner before the town could get things under control.  A solitary tear stung its way forward as she thought of her father’s diner being reduced to smoldering rubble.

_No, fuck it.  It’s better demolished than belonging to someone else._

The last thing Liz saw was the entire horizon burning brightly like ominous hellfire in the stark night and the sharp silhouette of Junkrat throwing his hands up in the air gleefully with laughter.  She squeezed her eyes shut and buried her face into Roadhog’s back.  Nothing she could do now but hold on.


	3. Little Motel

They rode west for a while.  Felt like hours to Liz, but on a good day, she wasn’t a good judge of time past six minute increments.  When the bike finally slowed to a stop in front of a sleazy motel with neon lights and an antiquated sign that indicated that they had color tv and a/c, she slowly unclenched her fingers from Roadhog’s leather vest.

Junkrat nudged her, and she hopped to the ground.  “Alright, _liaison_.  Go get us a room.”

“I don’t have that kind of money.”  She held her arms out at her sides.  “Maybe like twelve bucks.  What did you get from the register?”

“Here.”  He thrust his hand into his bag and dug out a wad of bills, holding it out to her.  “I hope you have some more lucrative skills, because this isn’t a free ride.”

“Of course.”  She sighed as she smoothed out the money.  Morbid curiosity got the best of her while she counted the stack.  “How would you normally take care of this if I wasn’t here?”

Junkrat gave her a menacing grin.  “Bust in a door…”

“…And maybe a few heads,” Roadhog added.

Liz winced as Junkrat put a hand on her back.  “But that’s why we have you now, eh?  Our little diplomat, adding a bit of class to our act, yeah?  Go on, show us how it’s done.”

After a few moments inside, she emerged, holding up a card key.  “Room 213,” she announced, dangling it in the air.

They climbed the outdoor stairs to their accommodations, and she unlocked it for them.  Once the door swung open, a wall of dank mustiness hit them all at once.  Turning her nose up, Liz tossed the key on the side table as her new accomplices squeezed past her.  Junkrat flopped onto one of the full-size beds, and Roadhog flipped on the lights and the under-window air conditioner.  As soon as the first gust of air blew, a cloud of foul-smelling dust puffed out and several roaches scurried up the wall from under the unit.  Before Liz could react, a gecko followed suit, making them his dinner and disappearing into the drapes.  She dejectedly made her way inside, and the door shut behind her.

“Ahh, freedom!”  Junkrat sprawled out on the mattress, stretching and grinning.  “So whaddya think, Cookie?  Is this just as glamourous as you imagined?”

“Yeah, like something out of a dream,” she answered in the same sarcastic tone he used.  Removing her apron and chef’s coat, she deftly unhooked her bra and pulled it from under her loose-necked, stretched out t-shirt and sat next to Junkrat on the bed to take off her boots.  One side of the over-sized neckhole slipped down, showing bare shoulder, and she couldn’t help but notice Junkrat’s eyes wandering over her as she shook her hair down from its bandana, the gently-waved tips cascading down her back.  “What’s the matter?  Never seen a girl up close before?”

“Sure, I have,” he retorted.  “You’ve just been so crass, I failed to realize you _are_ one.”

“Charming.”

Roadhog let out an attention-seeking grunt, and they both briefly forgot their banter.  “I’m getting in the shower.”

Junkrat gave him an incredulous brow arch.  “So?”

“So?  I was letting the Sheila know in case she needs to get in there first.”

She smirked, heading that way.  “See there?  Roadhog is a real gentleman.  You could learn something from him.”

Junkrat switched his animosity to Roadhog, glaring and sticking his tongue out at him as she moved past them to the bathroom.  “Fuckwit!”

“Bogan.”

When she returned, Junkrat was stripped clear of his boot and all his weapons, still reclining on one side, but she couldn’t help but notice the sharp, rusty teeth of a bear trap by the room’s door.  A couple grenades were suspended above the frame.  She pointed a thumb towards it.  “Is that really necessary?”

“The real question is, is it _not_ necessary.”

She shook her head dismissively and reached in her shorts, pulling out the change from booking the room and slapping it on the mattress next to him.

Resting his head in one hand, he waved the other in front of him.  “Keep it, mate.  In case something else comes up.”

She shrugged, tossing it on the nightstand with the rest of her pocket’s contents.  _I tried._ She untangled her sunglasses from her hair and began to fold back the covers on the other bed.

“Nuh-uh.  What are you doing?”

“I’m going to bed.”

“Not there, you aren’t.  That one’s Hog’s”

Her arms dropped to her sides as she let out an exasperated breath, turning to face him.  “Ok, then.  Get up.”

He shook his head.  “I don’t think so.”

“Where am I supposed to sleep then?”

“Hey, we didn’t exactly invite you, remember?  You kinda invited yourself, so I don’t see how _we_ should be inconvenienced by that.”

“Yeah, but I did my job.  I secured the room for us, and I paid my third, so fair is fair.”

“One third… of two beds?”

“They don’t have rooms with three beds in this fleabag motel.”

“So what did _you_ think the sleeping arrangements were going to be?”

“I dunno.  You two could share a bed.”

“Share one of these baby cots?  With _him_?  You didn’t really think that through, did ya?”

“So what do you suggest?”

He began to pat the blankets next to him with a shit-eating grin.  “It’s okay, Cookie.  I got plenty ah room.”

She chuckled.  “No friggin’ way.  Not happening.”

“Suit yourself,” he said, flipping onto his back and pulling the blanket over him.  “But I’m not moving.”

She stood there fuming.  Her anger began to dissipate as his breaths slowed down to a dreamy rhythm, and her mind wandered.  “You’re really going to sleep like that?”

“Uh, yeah,” was his breathy, delayed response with closed eyes.

“No, I mean… your arm.  You don’t… remove it?”

His eyes slowly opened and looked up at her standing over him.  “Why do you care?”

She shrugged.  “I don’t really.  Just curious.  I just thought that –”

“I don’t take it off.”  His mech fingers reflexively twitched.  “It’s not made for that.”

“And your leg?"

“I don’t _like_ to take it off, okay?”  He rolled over onto his side with his back to her, tucking his hands under his pillow.

Her eyes started to wander back to the other bed, but by then, Roadhog was out of the shower.  Wearing nothing but a towel and his mask, he crawled into the free bed.  She cringed as he tossed the towel out from under the covers.

He inexplicably held up a hand, and Liz looked around in confusion.

Just then, Junkrat produced a Pachimari plush from his seemingly bottomless bag and tossed it to Roadhog.  He caught it effortlessly and began snoring almost immediately.

Junkrat reached over and turned the light off.  “Night, Hog.  Night, Cookie.”

The snoring paused only for a slurred callback of, “Night.”

Liz was still frozen in place for what felt like an eternity, at a loss what to do with herself.  Snatching the extra pillows and blanket off of Junkrat’s nest, she eventually laid down in the space between the two beds.  Tossing and turning, the minutes crawled by, and she was beginning to grow cold from the draft blowing under the bedframes.

She forced herself up and walked over to the a/c unit, but as soon as she switched it off, Roadhog grunted into semi consciousness.  “Turn.  It.  Back.  On.”

That booming voice of his, even in its quietest tones, shook her to the very core.  She didn’t waste a moment turning the dial back, and as soon as it kicked on, that same musty air from before puffed in her face, blowing her hair back.

She returned to the floor.  Her weary eyes were glued to the space under the bed beside her, watching the shadow-cloaked movements of the geckos and ceremoniously counting them like sheep.  One of them began to make its way towards her in an erratic path, and, she inched her hand that way to pet it.  Just before she made contact, the creature startled and rushed out from under the bed, revealing itself to be the largest roach she had ever seen.  She gasped, retreating to the edge of Junkrat’s bed and pulling her feet off the floor to safety.  She watched as it disappeared into the folds of her blanket.

Begrudgingly, she decided to stay in Junkrat’s bed with him.  He made a little moan in his sleep when the mattress sank with her weight, shifting as she wrestled with his blanket.  The moment she was settled, she felt his arm flop over her side, and he let out a satisfied sigh, cuddling up closer to her.

She wanted to be mad, but it was comfortable.

_Whatever._

She closed her eyes and tried pretending it was Jesse beside her, despite the faint smoky, burnt hair smell he was giving off.  Just as she was starting to doze off, a vision of Brigette’s bloody, slack-jawed corpse flashed in her head, and her body jerked awake.

“Shhh,” came an uncharacteristically soft and soothing sound from the generally boorish man behind her.  “She’ll be right.”

“Who?”

His fingers ran through her hair, petting her lovingly.  “It was only a bad dream.  Go back to sleep, Mako.”  His fingers trailed off of her and under his own chin as he nuzzled into her shoulder.

“Are you awake?”

A slumber-heavy snort was the only response.

This strange moment replayed on loop in her head until she forgot about her troubles and finally fell sleep.

…

She woke at her usual time.

_Dammit.  I don’t have to be anywhere and still can’t sleep in…_

Junkrat began to whimper and stir beside her.  She rolled over to face him, hoping he would talk in his sleep again, maybe even disclose some valuable information she could use.

“Nnnngmmm…”

“Junkrat.”  She whispered so as not to alert Roadhog, the light sleeper he was.  “ _Junkrat_.”

“Hmm?”

“Who’s Mako?”

His eyes popped open, and he looked for only a brief moment before glaring.  He hissed back, “Where did you hear that name?”

The other bed creaked as Roadhog turned toward them.  “I’m Mako.  He’s Jamison.  Why?”

“No reason.”   Sitting up awkwardly, she pushed her hair behind her ear.  “So, today –“

“Hmm-mm,” Roadhog grumbled, retreating further under the covers.  “Brekky first.”

Junkrat sprang out of bed and dashed towards the bathroom.  “You’re the cookie.  Naturally, you’ll be taking care of that, eh?”

“I don’t see a stove here.”

“So?  There’s a restaurant across the street.”

Liz reached for her sunglasses.  “What did you guys have in mind?”

“Pancakes,” Roadhog replied automatically.  “And bacon.”

“And sausage,” Junkrat added from around the corner.

“And biscuits.”

“And omelettes!”

“And hashbrowns.”

“And waffles!”

“And orange juice.”

“And blueberry muffins!”

Liz was already struggling with getting her bra on under her shirt, but this back and forth was pushing her patience over the edge.  “Stop!  No!  No, be realistic.”

It was quiet for a moment before Roadhog definitively declared, “Pancakes.”

She pulled a cigarette out and placed it between her lips, poised to light it.  “Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Ok.  Pancakes I can do.”

“…and bacon,” he added quietly.

From the bathroom, the toilet flushing could be heard along with a cry of, “And sausage!”

“Nope!  Not doing this.”  She side-stepped the bear trap and bombs and rushed out the door before the cycle of requests could be repeated.

When she returned with their food, she found them still not dressed, sitting next to each other on Roadhog’s bed with their backs to the door.  A container of Vaseline was open on the nightstand.  She smirked to herself.  “What have you guys been up to?” she goaded.

Junkrat, still hunkered over, held up a couple of ashtrays.  “Assembling more explosives.”

She set the bag of food down on the table.  “Oh, like plastic explosives?  So _that’s_ why you took the ashtrays.”

He laughed in that squealy high-pitched way he did when he found something particularly amusing.  “That’s not what plastic explosives are made out of.”

“Then what are they made of?”

This time he held up the Vaseline.  “Petroleum Jelly.”

“Pfft, of course,” she mumbled to herself sarcastically.  “What was I thinking?”

“I only stole the ashtrays to be an asshole,” he added with a giggle.  “And now I’m upcycling them.  Waste not, want not, mate.”

Roadhog discreetly slipped into his pants and crossed the room to the bags of food.  Prying open the top container, he growled.  “This isn’t bacon.”

“That one’s Junkrat’s.”  She took the container from him.  “Keep looking.  There’s bacon in there.”

When she held it out to Junkrat, he didn’t take it.  “You can cut the crap, Cookie.”

“What?”

“Don’t come the raw prawn with me.”  He snatched the takeout box and set it down beside him, not giving it a second thought.  “We know you aren’t _fans_ of us.  What kind of fools do you take us for?”

An image of him jumping on the table and bouncing around the diner like the Mad Hatter crossed her mind.  She just shrugged.

“I admit, we kinda put you in a…” he made finger quotes in the air, ”’hostage’-type situation back there, and you’ve been a real good sport.  We’ve enjoyed making you cringe for the past twelve hours or so, but if you just want to tell us everything you know about Sombra and leave, we won’t hold it against ya.”

She knew if she had any sense, she would have cut her losses then and went on her way, but she didn’t.  _There’s nothing to go back to…_

“Weren’t you listening to anything I said back there?  I don’t wanna leave.  I’m part of your team now.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever.” He folded the leg with the peg under him and dug into the food box.  “Just tell us where Sombra is then.”

“Like I said, I have friends.  I don’t know where she is, but they do.”

“I thought you said before that you don’t _have_ any friends.”

“Okay, we’ll call them ‘connections.’  They know everything that matters.  Ever heard of the Deadlock Gang?”

“Maybe,” he replied facetiously, but Roadhog grumbled a, “Yes.”

“Yeah, I go waaay back with them.  They’ll be able to tell you what you need to know.”

“I’ll bite, mate.  So where is this Deadlock Gang, now?”

“They aren’t exactly as, uh, active as they used to be.  Have to keep a low profile.  So it’s not like they have a headquarters we can just go visit.  We’ll have to make a few stops, see who I can find, talk to a few people.”

“Sounds dicey.”

“No, really, it’s not as bad as you might think.  I grew up not too far from here.  We’ll just need to go back a little ways the way we came.  I know more than a few people there that should be able to point us in the right direction.  It’ll be cool.  You’ll see.”

The criminals exchanged a glance, and Junkrat sighed.  “Well, if you insist on giving us the tour of your shithole hometown.”  He tossed his food container aside and pointed to the third one.  “Bog in!  We don’t have all day!”


	4. I Came as a Lizard

Once more, they piled up on that impractical motorcycle rig. Giving up on trying to keep her hair neat with the bandana, Liz shoved it into her pocket and idly watched the vast expanse of desert seemingly crawl by due to its inherent emptiness. At least with that much wind in her face, the sun didn't feel hot.

Once they arrived at the bar she had directed them to, she hopelessly tried to finger-comb her hair, but she kept snagging on impossible tangles.

"Ya got a bug in your teeth, mate," Junkrat commented.

"No, I fucking don't," she replied as she tied the bandana back over her head to hide the matted nest of hair. Instinctively, she ran her tongue across her teeth anyhow, and Junkrat got a kick out of this.

"Too easy," he said with a light giggle, pushing the door open.

Like being cast out into space, the air inside somehow felt even dryer and thinner than the desertscape they had just traveled. Once their sight adjusted to the dimness, they could see all eyes had turned on them the second they stepped through.

"Lizard!"

Junkrat's face contorted. "Lizard?"

Ignoring him, she kept walking straight to the dreary, run-down bar towards the man that had greeted her. "Rodrigo," she called to him unenthusiastically with a pseudo wave.

"Haven't seen you in some years." He looked back over his shoulder. "Hey, Dan! Look who it is!" He held his hands out around her like a magician's assistant. "¡La Legartita!"

Another scruffy-looking fellow raised his whiskey glass up slightly, barely giving her the time of day. "Jesse's not here, you know."

"I know that, Dan –"

"Aw, shit! You still hung up on that pendejo? You should forget him, mamacita. You wanna ride a real cowboy, I could hook you up." Rodrigo followed his comment with a sickly laugh and some obscene hip gestures.

Junkrat's nose crinkled in disgust.

Dan lifted his glass to his lips for a sip. "If she wanted that tater tot dick of yours, hermano, she would have looked your number up on the bathroom wall."

"Yeah, well, she must have missed it. Here, gimme your phone, and I'll put it in for you." He hooked a finger in her belt loop and jerked her closer, slipping his hand into her back pocket.

"Rod! Fucking let go–" She pushed at him, but he continued digging around for her phone.

Junkrat suddenly grabbed him by his shirt and yanked him up off his stool. "Hey, drongo! She said let go!" Roadhog emphasized his associate's point with one of those guttural growls of his.

Rodrigo backed off and threw his hands up level with his eyes, holding her flip phone in one. "Everything's cool," he assured them. He glanced out of the corner of his eye at the bulky, outdated device with a dismissive grimace. "What is this burner garbage, anyway? You selling drugs or somethin'?"

"No!" She snatched it from him, glaring at Junkrat. "I can handle myself, you know!"

He gave her a crooked smile, releasing his grip. "Fine."

Rod dropped back down to his stool, smoothing his shirt out. "Who's your friends?"

"No one, it doesn't matter," she replied, still fuming and flustered. "Are any of the others here? I need to speak to someone about something discreet."

He motioned behind him without looking. "Just me and Dan. Why? You got money troubles again, Lizard? I could probably come off a few bucks for some 'favors'."

"Nope. Conversation over. Nice talking to you, Rod." She pushed passed him down the bar to his brother.

Junkrat and Roadhog continued to loom over Rodrigo, and he leered back up at them. "Don't I know you two?"

Roadhog stayed still as a brick wall.

"Don't think so, mate," Junkrat spat out at him with palpable contempt.

"No, I've seen you somewhere before…"

Junkrat's confidence waned as he shot Roadhog a glance, who was silently sizing up the rest of the bar's patrons.

Already engaging Dan, Liz missed this whole exchange.

Dan motioned to the bartender for another drink avoiding her gaze. "Look, Lizard. Everyone that's still around heard he was at your diner yesterday –"

"And who told you that?"

He ignored her question with a scoff. "You know some of the boys are still salty about him joining Blackwatch..."

"Ok, first of all, that's not my diner anymore. Second, he was forced to join Blackwatch. And third, Blackwatch doesn't even exist anymore."

"…But not as salty as you apparently. Just skip the bullshit, and tell me why you're here."

"You know why."

"Like I said, there's a lot of bad blood, and there is no Deadlock Gang to speak of. Most of 'em are still incarcerated, and the ones that are left have had less contact with him than you have."

"Can't you give me a name, a place, a thread of hope? I wouldn't be here right now if it wasn't important."

"Was he heading west?"

"Yeah."

He took a long, contemplative sip of his new beverage, grimacing as it burned down his throat. "You could try Rose's Cantina. He has a few connections down there he may try to reach out to."

She grabbed a pen from the apron of a passing waitress. "And where is that, exactly?"

"Keep west on Route 66 til you get to Parajo and head south on 23. Lotta nada for miles, so you'll know it when you see it."

She nodded as she wrote it on her palm. Once she was done, she grabbed Dan's hand. "Here's my number," she explained as wrote it on the back of his hand. "If he comes through or anyone sees him, make sure someone calls me. If I don't answer – "

"Were those hombres you came in with your ride?"

She looked up from her writing. "Yeah, why?"

He pointed behind her to the exit. "They just left."

She gasped and darted away. "I gotta go!"

Outside, she ran through the parking lot, catching up to them as they slowed down to turn onto the highway. Out of breath, she dove in front of the sidecar, digging her feet in the dirt and posting both hands on its edge until Roadhog let the bike idle off. "What the fuck, guys?!"

Junkrat avoided her eyes. "Oh, there you are! What's up?"

"You were going to leave me!"

"But we didn't get to. And here we are. Sooo…"

"So? So! I thought you wanted help finding Sombra!" She climbed on the bike in her usual spot behind Roadhog. "Well. What are you waiting for? Let's go."

"You offered to help. We didn't ask."

Roadhog grumbled an agreeance.

Junkrat fidgeted a finger down the chrome trim on the sidecar. "Look, we had a few laughs. No sense running it into the ground. Perhaps it would be best if we go ahead and call it quits, eh?"

"Okay." Her head sank, and she slid down off the bike. "I guess I'll just keep this lead on Sombra to myself." She looked down into her palm for a moment, giving them a flash of the writing there before closing it into a fist and crossing her arms.

Finding her declaration acceptable, Roadhog revved the bike's engine, but Junkrat threw his hands out towards him. "Wait!" He looked back at Liz. "Okay, fine! You can stay."

She smiled and hopped back on.

"…Lizard." He smirked.

* * *

The sun was just past overhead by the time they were on the road. Liz could feel the skin on her face tightening in the beginnings of a sunburn. When Roadhog finally pulled over to get gas, she was racing inside for a break from the direct light and giddy over the prospect of a cold drink. She grabbed the first clear soda she saw from a cooler by the door and took it to the register, savoring its cool condensation in her hand.

The apathetic cashier barely acknowledged her, ringing her up with unimpassioned, automatic motions. "Will that be all?"

"Fill up on 2 and a pack of cigarettes," she directed him while counting her bills. She stopped to look past him at the racks behind the counter. "And that prepaid minutes card." Laying the money down, she immediately popped the cap off her drink with the counter's edge, guzzling half of it before the sale was complete.

Just then, the door flung open, slamming into the wall and rattling on its hinges as Junkrat dashed inside. "What are you doing?"

"What am I doing? What are _you_ doing?" she remarked frustratedly as she folded the change in with the rest of her bills. "You should be outside."

"Where's that knife of yours?"

She patted her side. "Right here."

The clerk's dead eyes suddenly sparked awake as he soaked in more of their exchange. "Hold on…"

"You can't just keep _paying_ for things! That costs money!"

"Geez, sorry. Didn't know we were on a budget."

Junkrat swiveled his frag launcher into view over the counter, resting an elbow on the edge. "Empty the register, mate," he replied casually.

Liz noticed the clerks eyes momentarily glance down. When he began lowering himself, her heart raced. Instinctively, she flicked her blade out of her pocket and hopped onto the counter, lightly pressing the tip at the clerk's throat, stopping him short of reaching under the counter. Despite the adrenaline, she kept a steady, even pressure – just enough for him to feel it's danger without breaking skin. Her own panicked breathing went unnoticed by the now anxious clerk, and she unconsciously looked to Junkrat for approval that she didn't even know she needed.

A giggle tittered out of him at her quick and effective reaction. His eyes darted back to the cashier. "This your place?"

"Whu- what?"

"This gas station. Does it belong to you?"

"N- no…"

"Then it's not really worth risking your neck for, is it?" Junkrat waved toward the counter. "Lizard. Get the gun."

The clerk began to visibly tremble. "What?"

"The gun you were going for under the counter."

"There's no gun!"

Liz hung her head upside-down over the other side of the counter. "I don't see one, actually."

"I don't have a gun, I swear!" The clerk pointed a shaky finger at a remote under the register. "I- I was going for the panic button."

"Why? Are you panicked?"

"Y- yeah."

"Well that makes sense, then, doesn't it?" Junkrat burst into laughter. "Get your stuff and split, Lizard. I'll take care of this guy."

"Junkrat, no! He's harmless –"

"You're wasting time!" He smashed a fist down on the register, and it popped up with bills fluttering aside like confetti. "We can debate this later!"

Still hanging over the counter, she shoved handfuls of the bills down her shirt and shorts. Before righting herself, she grabbed as many packs of cigarettes as she could with one swipe and hit the door.

By the time she came back outside, Roadhog was finished pumping gas and already seated on the bike. She quietly took her place behind him, trying to make sense of what she had just taken part of. Her palm ran down the front of her shirt, smoothing the wads of cash underneath and then trailed down to her pockets where she nervously fingered an unopened pack of cigarettes, her gaze settling into the middle distance.

Suddenly the bike dipped at Junkrat's weight being thrown into the sidecar as he tossed a bag of chips to Roadhog who caught it without looking. He threw back his own bottle of soda and tossed the empty aside where it hit the ground and shattered. "So. Where are we heading again?" His chipper disposition was completely in contrast with what Liz would expect from someone who just robbed a convenience store.

Liz pulled her sweaty hand out of her pocket to check the now smeared, illegible note on the palm. "Aw, fuck," she mouthed to herself, thrusting her fist back in her cutoffs. "West," she replied.

"I know _that_! What's the name of the town?"

"…Some word that starts with a 'P'."

His bushy eyebrow cocked, and he jumped up into a stance in the sidecar. He reached for her wrist, pulling her hand up to his face to examine the blotched scribble. A strange vibrating sound came from deep in his throat, and he got red in the face. "What is this?!"

She laughed nervously. "Sorry, I just…. It's hot and…"

"Dammit, Cookie!"

"I pretty much remember what Dan told me, though. Rose's Cantina. It's in Pajero or something like that. South on…" She squinted at the writing in her palm. "Some road with a 3 in it… Or is that a backwards E…" she mumbled to herself.

Visibly holding back anger, the junker just started making a bunch of noises through his teeth, and his hands balled into fists. Liz winced as he took a swing with his mech arm, putting a dent into the gas pump beside him with a blow that assuredly would have busted his knuckles open had he swung with his other fist. He paused for a moment, carefully examining the damage he did. Just when she thought that was it, he took another, and another, and another, with every punch jarring the bike as his wordless swearing crescendoed. Slightly winded, he ran his fingers through the flame-like tips of his hair as he caught his breath.

Liz felt pressured to say something, but not really sure what. "Are you okay?"

"Yep." He turned back to her, cool as a cucumber. "Lemme have a smoke, mate."

She complied without hesitation.

As he lit it, she kept staring at the banged up pump behind him, gas dripping from a mangled kink in the hose and drizzling down the metal's new curves to the ground. The nozzle now laid in the dusty parking lot, gushing onto the concrete and mixing with the dirt into a glistening, murky puddle. She could feel her pulse quickening with every drop spilt - even more so when Roadhog revved up the motorcycle. Just as he was pulling them away, Junkrat took a final, definitive drag and thumped the lit butt behind him without so much as a second thought. They breezed off, and Liz held on for dear life, never looking back.

She never saw the boom, but she felt it, long past the sensation fading into the rhythmic vibrations of the bike.


	5. You Know You're Right

They continued on for a while, putting plenty of distance between them and the gas station incident before Roadhog veered them to another rundown motel.

"It's not even dark yet!" Junkrat griped.

"Shut up, Rat! I'm hungry!"

Liz booked the room for them like before, only this time, she took a couple extra minutes to dig through the lost-and-found until she found a charger that fit her phone.

As soon as they came through the door, Roadhog went straight to the landline to order pizza, and Junkrat kicked his one boot off. Liz, coming in last, shut the door behind her, throwing her hands up the second it clicked into the doorframe. "What the fuck, Junkrat?!"

"What?"

"Why did you kill that poor gas station attendant?! He didn't do anything to deserve that!"

His eyes rolled. "Who said I did?"

"That's fucked up! He was just doing his job because he had to and you fucking killed him!"

"It wasn't like I did it on purpose. Besides, he could have made it out alright. You don't know."

"So you didn't kill him after I left?"

"No, I just scared him a little bit."

"But still," she stumbled over her argument and began to pace. "That… that explosion! He was a real person, Junkrat! He had a life, probably friends and family, hopes and dreams, and you don't even care! Just because you want to blow something up doesn't mean you can just do that without any regards for people's safety!"

Junkrat followed her movements with a smug grin on his face. "What about that Sheila you work with?"

"Brigette," Roadhog interjected, immediately turning his attention back to the phone.

"Yeah, the waitress. What about her?"

Liz stopped pacing, her scowl deepening. "What about her?"

"You didn't spit the dummy about her."

"…That's different."

Junkrat smirked. "How is that different?"

"Well, she… She was going to call the cops. It was a self-preservation move."

"No one ever said that. You're drawing your own conclusion."

"Was there some other reason, then?"

"Nah, I like that one."

"What?!"

His expression turned more sinister. "What if I kill _you_?"

"And why would you do that?"

"You tell me."

"You wouldn't."

"You're right, I guess that doesn't sound like something I would do. So hard to keep all this senseless violence straight." He mindlessly wiggled his black toe nails into the grimy shag carpet. "In fact, if I recall, Roadhog's the one who killed Brigette. Was that, you, Hog? Did you kill Brigette?"

He momentarily put a hand over the receiver. "Yes."

"I feel like I'm being attacked, here. Why don't you ask _him_ why he killed Brigette?"

Liz's arms stiffened as she formed fists by her side. "Oh, fuck Brigette!"

Junkrat jumped up and burst into laughter. "There it is! You don't like Brigette!"

"What?"

"The real reason you didn't throw a wobbly over her is because you don't like her, and you think the world is better off without her, but I'm sure she had hopes and dreams and all that junk, too."

"I never…said…"

"You don't have to. I figured it out. And if ya ask me, I find it infinitely more reprehensible that you are self-important enough to think that you can make a judgement on who deserves to live or die."

"It's not self-importance."

"Whatever. My way – the non-discerning way – is far more fair and even-handed."

"So basically you're saying everyone deserves to die?"

"Whether they deserve it or not, it's gonna happen. When it comes right down to it, it doesn't matter whether you're a suit or a working cunt. We're all the same equally explodable meatbags just waiting for our turn to die, so let's be real. There's no difference between that scenario and this one, and if you have a problem, I don't think the conflict is with us. I think it's with you." He took a few menacing steps closer to her.

"No…no…"

He pressed a finger in the center of her chest. "Suss yourself out, first, mate. If you don't have the stomach for it, maybe you should rethink this gig."

"Don't worry about me," she said, finding her voice once more. "I can handle anything you throw at me. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't give some thought to how you do things. Maybe be more careful and not kill people you don't have to, yeah?"

Something clicked as his snarky intimidation melted into that insane grin. "Ok, you convinced me. I'll start by not killing _you_!"

"You know, acting like a dick won't make yours any bigger," she commented bitterly under her breath, sitting down on the nearest bed and plugging in her phone.

"Eh, I'm pretty happy with the balance I've struck." Junkrat plopped down next to her and flipped the TV on with the remote, his eyes instantly glued to it. "So, _Lizard_. You and Jesse, eh?"

Her face flushed. This change of topic was effective in getting her to forget about their squabble. "That's not a, uh, thing."

"But he's a 'friend' of yours?"

"Barely. He used to come in the diner like every day, but the Deadlock Gang got busted up and he stopped coming around."

His eyes shifted to look at her discreetly from the corners. Getting the rise out of her he was going for, a spark lit up in him. "Oh, I see! You got a little crush on the bloke!"

"No, I don't," she insisted, her cheeks burning. "That's just a thing the guys used to tease me about."

This only encouraged him. "Yeah, because you obviously want him! Lizard and Jesse! I bet you used to say that out loud all the time to see how that sounds."

She sighed. "How childish. No…"

"Speaking of kids, you got names picked out yet? How about Salamander? Or Skink?"

She stood up. "Fuck this. I'm going to shower."

"Hahahaaa! You gonna be thinking about Jesse while you're in there?"

"Oh my god, shut _up_!" She slammed the door behind her.

He cupped a hand at his mouth and shouted, "Hope you brought a toy. I don't think the shower head detaches."

The door reopened and her head poked out momentarily. "You know, showers are actually used for getting _clean_! Something to think about there, pig pen." The following slam knocked a horrid pastel landscape print on the wall askew above him.

Roadhog, finished with his order, perked his head up at the word 'pig', looking over at Junkrat, but he waved dismissively at his friend. "No worries, mate, she was talking about me."

Roadhog continued to stare him down, no emotions showing through his mask.

"Isn't she a ripper?" Junkrat offered.

Roadhog growled quietly.

"You've already made your stance clear. I'm gonna give her the flick, okay?" He began to dig around in his pockets. "Right now we have more pressing matters to attend to, unless you want to keep riding aimlessly through this sad excuse for a desert." He smoothed out a napkin covered in scribbles on the mattress in front of him.

They deliberated over the napkin until they heard the shower cut off. Junkrat scrambled to put it away before she returned, both of them staring at her when she came out.

She stopped in the doorway, staring back. "What?"

Junkrat turned to the TV nonchalantly. "Nothing." He flipped a few channels, coming to a stop on the news. "Look at that! We made top story tonight." He and Roadhog high-fived, and then he turned the volume up.

" _…setting a gas station on fire after robbing it on Route 66 this afternoon. We've got Jeff Higgins on the scene, can we go to Jeff?_ "

The reporter was standing in front of the half-burnt structure being picked over by men in hazmat suits. Emergency vehicles were still parked in the background.

Junkrat pouted. "Aw, only two fireys this time." He suddenly jumped up. "Look! Look right there!"

Liz squinted at the TV. "What?"

He pointed to a man talking to some police in the distance. "There's your servo dipstick, right there! He made it after all. Looks like you owe me an apology, Lizard."

"No, I don't. My point is still valid…" Junkrat just became background noise to her as she focused on what the reporter was saying.

_"From the eyewitness description, they believe the male suspect to be one half of an international crime duo from Australia. The female suspect still has not been positively identified, but police have not ruled out that this is connected with yesterday's diner fire…"_

Before Liz had any time to think about the implications, there was a knock. Junkrat lunged towards the door, but Liz motioned for him to stay back. "Give me the money, and _I'll_ get it. Liaison, remember?"

"Aren't you being a little ridiculous, mate?"

"This from the guy who booby-trapped the last hotel room."

He smiled. "That was equal parts business and pleasure." She reached for him, thrusting a hand into his pocket, and he threw his hands up, flinching. "Whoa, there, Lizard!"

She smirked, pulling out a handful of cash.

His posture slumped. "Just like a Sheila, spending all our hard-earned money."

Despite her precautions, she could still hear him running his mouth about the news report to Roadhog as she paid the delivery driver, and she inadvertently cringed the whole time. She noticed the driver tried to look past her into the room, and she glared at him. "Can I help you with something?"

"I was just –"

"Being nosy," she finished for him, holding back some of the cash she was about to hand over. "You know what? No tip." She shut the door in his face and tossed the pizza boxes and money onto the bed. "See what I mean? Aren't you glad I answered the door now?"

"Uh, yeah, 'cause now we have pizza." He passed one of the boxes to Roadhog and opened the other in front of him, removing a slice. "So, Lizard…"

She cringed again, wishing he had never heard that nickname.

He noticed and seemed to relish this. "…Tell us more about your lead."

She grabbed a slice for herself and sat down on the edge of the bed. "Dan says there may be some people there that Sombra has been in contact with in the past. They may be able to give us some more information."

"So basically your plan is to drive from boozer to boozer and talk to people until we find someone that knows where she is?"

"Well…" She rushed to swallow the bite she had just taken. "When you put it that way it sounds really lame, but essentially, yes. Did you have a better plan before I came along?"

Junkrat glanced over at his bodyguard briefly before continuing. "Not really, but that's my point, mate. We could have done that ourselves."

"Yeah, but you don't know anyone around here –"

"You don't even know where _here_ is."

"I have contacts. They're just hard to track down. The good ones are, anyway." She began to move towards the door, craving a cigarette under the pressure.

"How do your contacts know Sombra exactly?"

"It's their business to know everyone important." She reached for her phone, her other hand already on the doorknob. "They were in a notorious gang. They dealt in illicit activities. It's what gangs do."

"Suuure."

"I got a question for _you_. Why do you need to find Sombra so badly?"

"Because. She's in a notorious gang. She deals in illicit activities…"

"Y'know, you're kinduva ass."

"And _you_ take things way too seriously."

She sighed. "I'm going to go smoke."

"No one's stoppin' ya."

"Do me a favor and try not to booby-trap the door until after I get back."

"No promises, mate."

When the door slammed shut behind her, Roadhog immediately shot Junkrat a look that only he could read through the mask.

Junkrat shrugged. "What?"

"You _know_ what."

"No-o-o, I don't."

"You wanna root her."

"No, I don't!"

Roadhog continued to stare in his direction.

"I only have eyes for you, big guy," he said with a straight face.

No reply.

"What else do you want me to say?"

"I want you to quit lying for once."

"I swear on my grave I'm not trying to fuck her! Are you even sure she's out of earshot while you wanna have this argument?"

Roadhog pushed the drapes over an inch and peeked out. "We don't need her."

"I'm just enjoying her company is all. What's wrong with that?"

Roadhog got quiet again.

"She's good conversation. You wouldn't know anything about that, would you?"

"…"

"Besides, if I was trying to get in her pants, I would have already that first night when she came _crawling_ into bed with me."

"Her or me."

"What?"

"Either she goes or I do."

"Don't bloody do that! You know you don't even mean it anyway…"

"I do mean it."

"You would forfeit your share of the spoils for a petty jealous spell over some Sheila? I don't think so."

"I'm not jealous," he growled.

"Don't worry, mate, she's not getting a cut. We'll ditch her tonight, okay? Does that make you happy?"

"We could ditch her right now."

"Bugger that! This hotel room is already paid for and I want to use it. We'll leave once she's asleep." He shoved the pizza box aside and laid down. "Now, if you're done earbashing, I'd like to catch a few winks. It's gonna be a late night."

* * *

It felt like an eternity waiting for her phone to power on. It barely had any charge, but Liz figured it would be enough to do what she needed to do. Once she had the minutes loaded, her inbox lit up with messages and missed calls in the double digits. "Oh, geez."

A few of them were just bullshit, but scrolling through her inbox, she didn't have to go far before one caught her eye.

_"Hey this is Jesse…"_

Her heart skipped a beat as she read on.

_"…I heard about the diner fire and came back. Call me back at this number when you get this."_

_…_

_"Everyone is looking for you. Please call me so I'll know you're okay."_

Without reading any further, she hit 'call'. It didn't ring at all. She tried again and still, nothing. She frantically navigated back to her messages, each one less concerned and more serious than the last.

_"I talked to Dan and he said you came through. I really need to talk to you."_

_…_

_"Liz I know this is your number and its imperative that you call me."_

_…_

_"I know who you're with, and you should know you are being considered a suspect in Brigette and Russel's murders. The diner's owner is pressing charges on the arson, says you have motives. I don't know what those two told you but you're making a big mistake running with them."_

She tried once more to call the number to no avail. Already in a panic, she dreaded reading the last message, but eventually drew enough strength to scroll down to it:

_"Liz, I tried, I really did. I know from what Dan and Rod told me that you ain't being held hostage. I really hope I'm wrong and you aren't helping them, but if you are, I strongly suggest you reconsider. What happens to them …and you… will be out of my hands. For my own safety, this is the last message you're getting from me. I'm destroying this phone. Good luck Liz."_


	6. Sleepyhead

With the sun finally starting to sink, Liz walked down the eerily quiet highway, chainsmoking, hoping she'd come upon a bar or convenience store. God, she needed a drink.

What was the point of any of this anymore? All of this, for McCree. Who barely knew her despite the years. Who thought so little of her, he all too easily assumed that instead of helping him, she would rather help these two hardened criminals that he had already expressed an interest in capturing.

With her emotions more in control of her than reason, it was difficult for her to think things through, but she knew she had to. She could probably clear her name with the law, but she'd have to leave immediately to increase her chances of doing so. Arson she could see why they might believe, but murder? She'd have to throw the junkers under the bus on that one. There'd be lawyers – and lawyer _fees_ … She felt a headache stabbing at her temple when she thought back to how well that worked out for her before with her trying to save the diner from foreclosure – trying to do things the right way. All that money gone and nothing to show for it save an arson motive.

And then there was the gas station. With there being a witness, it was going to be pretty hard to talk her way out of that one.

This must be how outlaws are made – bad misunderstandings and shitty situations. Fuck the system. She'd always had a problem with authority anyway. Suddenly, crashing in shitty motel after shitty motel was starting to look good to her. Burning it all down and starting over…

This is the rock bottom she had been bracing for since her father died. The kick of change in the proverbial groin.

She turned back down the road, confident that she was destined for this, with or without Jesse. Maybe she'd even collect the junkers' bounty herself. If that was still possible. Something to think about.

When she finally returned, her accomplices were already in bed. She closed the unbooby-trapped door silently and watched them for a while, weighing the pros and cons of turning them in. With $25 million, she'd never have to work another day in her life, but then what _would_ she do?

 _Probably die alone in a mansion full of cats to eat my face instead of just a trailer full_.

A morbid chuckle slipped out of her, but she immediately stifled herself so she wouldn't wake her new roommates. _That bounty isn't going anywhere but up. And in the meantime, I can look for that so-called treasure…_

She carefully felt her way in the dark to their belongings and through Junkrat's bag of holding full of explosives and various pieces of scrap. _Every bit of this is junk…_

She glanced back at them to make sure they were still asleep. They were so calm and quiet. Roadhog was pretty much always that way, but it was surreal for Junkrat. She should have known he wouldn't stay peaceful for long.

"No!"

His sudden outburst made her freeze in terror.

"No, Mako, those are _my_ Pachimaris. Get… your… own…" He turned over and began snoring again like nothing happened.

Thoroughly shook, she carefully returned their things how she found them and turned back to the slumbering junkers while she shed her boots and coat. Spittle dribbled from the corner of Junkrat's mouth, and his limbs kicked subtly the way dogs do when they dream. She caught herself smirking as she wondered what kind of dreams he had.

_Bombs. Explosions. Earth-shattering kabooms._

Wondering if there even was a treasure, she gave Junkrat a little nudge until he moved to one side. Laying down next to him, the full force of how emotionally drained she was hit her, and she resolved she didn't have to figure anything out right away. She had all the time in the world to figure it out while she kept slacking off with them.

With that warrant, sleep came surprisingly easy.

…

When her eyes opened, it took her a moment to register the muffled noises of movement in the room, and she reached behind her to feel for Junkrat, but he wasn't there. Instantly lucid, she sat up and all went suspiciously quiet. "What's going on?"

"Dammit."

Her eyes adjusted, and she looked around. Both Junkrat and Roadhog were fully dressed and facing the door. Just when she thought rock bottom couldn't get any lower, it did. "Are you seriously trying to leave me again?"

Junkrat pointed at the nightstand. "We left you some petty cash."

There was a long moment of silence broken by light sobbing. "You can't do this to me _now_!"

Roadhog growled softly, and Junkrat replied with a whine, coming back to the bed and sitting down beside her. "Please, don't do that," he begged. "It's not that bad."

"Yes, it is! They think I'm an accomplice!"

Junkrat chuckled and put his arm across her shoulders. "Well, ya kinda are, mate. Isn't that what you wanted?"

"No, you don't understand. They think I killed Brigette and Russell," she whimpered. "And that I burned down the diner."

"How do you know that?"

"I had all these messages," she said dismissively, tears streaming down her face. "And Jesse…" She began to weep uncontrollably. "I can't go back _now_ …"

"Aw, it's okay. All you gotta do is say you were kidnapped when you get back. They'll believe you, and you can get back to your normal life –" To his surprise, she pressed her face into his chest and cried harder. He hesitantly put his other arm around her. "I've never seen you like this. It's making me uncomfortable, mate."

"I don't have a normal life, anymore! This is it! I'm all in. You can't leave me…" She retreated deep into the blanket, wrapping it tightly around her and hiding her face under the loop of a makeshift hood.

"It's nothing personal." Junkrat gave her a little pat and pushed himself off the bed. "In fact, I kinda like ya, and I don't like anyone except for maybe ol' pig-face over there. That's why I let you come this far."

Her sniffles dried as her face scrunched in disgust. "Oh, you _let_ me come this far? You owe me more than that!"

"How do you figure? We saved you from the diner explosion. Beyond that, we don't _owe_ you anything."

"What about the diner itself?"

Junkrat matched her indignity. "Iiii'm sorry, was that _your_ diner?"

"Not exactly."

He started towards the door once more. "You'll find another job, mate."

"You _do_ owe me." She wiped away the last lingering tear, glaring at him and trying to grasp back onto the lie she had been feeding them. "And all I'm asking you for is to let me help you find Sombra."

"Forget it. You did what you could. We appreciate it, but we'll take it from here. We're not really looking for someone to babysit." They slipped away, the door quietly opening and closing behind them.

Alone, she buried her head into the pillow to stifle a frustrated scream. She was pissed and sad and scared all at once, and way too uncertain of anything to know what to do with herself. Minutes passed as she laid there in internal turmoil, waiting to hear the bike's engine start up, but she never did. After a while, she poked her head out from under the blanket, thinking maybe it had muffled the sound from her ears. Still not hearing any rumble from the bike, she focused her hearing outside and noticed some faint voices.

With the blanket still wrapped around her body, Liz cautiously went over to the drapes and peeked out to investigate. When she did, she saw four figures out in the parking lot: two guys with guns drawn and pointed at two others cuffed and tied up at their feet – Junkrat and Roadhog.

_How -?_

With her heart pounding and all the options she had been weighing before off the table, Liz shed the blanket and slid into her boots and chef's coat, rushing out the door.

"Hey!" she shouted to the two men. She steadied her steps, striding with newfound confidence.

They both turned and looked at her, one of them trailing his rifle her way. "Stay back, miss, this doesn't concern you."

Once they were facing her, she immediately recognized one of them as the delivery driver from earlier. _You've gotta be fucking kidding me_. She raised her hands to show she was unarmed and slowed her pace. "Actually it does." She nodded towards Junkrat. "That deadbeat right there _owes_ me," she declared, deliberately choosing her words.

"No, I don't!" Junkrat replied in childish defense as though clarifying that was more important than the fact that he was currently being held against his will.

The driver interrupted, "For what? The pizza?"

The other one, a larger more intimidating guy, raised his gun a little higher. "I don't care what business you have with this fella, he's in our custody now. You best run along."

She came to an abrupt stop. "I know about the bounties. You can have 'em. I'll settle for the bike. Just let me get the keys off them, and I'll be on my way."

Roadhog growled and struggled at his cuffs.

The driver lowered his defense a bit. "It's just a bike, Erv. Let her have it. You can always buy another one with the reward."

After a few moments of neck-rubbing consideration, he agreed. "Alright, but you stay where you are. We'll get 'em for ya."

Her hands still where they could see them, she nodded. "Fair enough. Check the big guy's pockets."

Roadhog put up as much of a fight as he could, but Erv searched him and eventually found the keys. When he tossed them to Liz, Roadhog finally grew still, accepting defeat.

"Now get out of here," Erv snapped.

She hopped on the motorcycle and revved it a couple times. With the sheer clout beneath her empowering her, she leered at the junkers. "Who's leaving who now?"

Roadhog was visibly vibrating with anger, but any horrifying growls he was making just then were drowned out and rendered ineffective by the bike's rumbling.

Junkrat simply scowled with the few venomous words spewing from him, burning his tongue like acid, "Seriously, get fucked, Lizard."

She just waved and rode off.

Every muscle in Junkrat's body tensed with frustration as he watched her disappear down the highway. Sure, they were going to bail out on her, but taking their bike? She could have made a clean break without it. She was just adding insult to injury. As mad as he was, he could only imagine how ropeable his cohort was. With that thought, he looked over at the frenetic mountain of rabid man both handcuffed and tied to the pole beside him. Knowing exactly how bad of an idea it was, he still couldn't keep his mouth shut. "Well, what am I paying you for? Save us!"

Roadhog shot him a hidden expression that Junkrat was certain was a glare, but he was unaffected nonetheless.

"It's your _job_! You're my bodyguard!"

He calmly faced forward once more, ignoring Junkrat.

The pizza deliveryman chuckled and pulled out his phone. "Guess you should have been more selective in the company you keep," he remarked as he took a few steps away from them to make his call.

"Fine! I'll just do it meself!" He wiggled and pulled at his cuffs so hard, they dug into the skin on his good arm. He felt a warm trickle of blood snake around his wrist, and his lids squeezed shut as he let out a pained hiss. When he reopened his eyes, Erv's gun was pointed right between them, inadvertently making him go cross-eyed as he glared down its barrel.

"I'd cool it if I were you, junker. This bounty don't say you need to be brought in alive."

Speechless for a change, he slumped into his binds.

In the new quiet, he heard a low rumble. At first, he thought it was Roadhog expressing his disgust in him. As it began to grow, he redirected his focus in the direction Liz had left, and an excited flutter radiated him through when he saw glimmers of light gleaming off of the chrome speeding their way. "That's her," he muttered quietly for only his accomplice to hear. "I know it."

Roadhog straightened his posture uncomfortably. "Bullshit."

Before they could debate it any further, Liz whipped into the parking lot steadily accelerating and heading straight for the captors. Junkrat grinned with wicked anticipation as he played out the rest of this violent rescue in his head.

Erv dove out of the way, but the driver was still on his cell and didn't turn in time to see. At the last second, she turned the bike sharply and slammed on the brakes with the motorcycle sliding sideways toward him, knocking into him at almost full speed. He flew through the air like a ragdoll, and she hopped off in a panic as the bike teetered precariously, almost flipping despite the sidecar. She hit the ground in a roll, but her victim, not so lucky, hit the gravel and skid until the motel curb stopped him by his battered, bruised head.

Once her roll came to a stop, she rushed across the parking lot to the junkers, digging through her pockets for her knife and clumsily spilling explosives the whole way. She had found what she was looking for by the time she reached them, and she attempted to cut the ropes but stopped short when she saw the cuffs. "Fuck…"

"Keys!" Junkrat shouted. "Get the keys."

She dove toward the pizza delivery guy she had hit with the bike, dropping on top of his chest and flicking her blade at his throat. "Keys," she commanded him, ignoring a pain in her ribs.

His only response was a cough coated in blood as his head fell limp to one side.

She grunted and began searching him, not finding any. Suddenly, she felt a kick to her back and she tumbled forward, taking a face dive into the dirt beside Junkrat.

"I fucking knew better," she heard Erv's voice spit at her from behind. She rolled over to find herself staring down his gun's barrel with the same jolted expression Junkrat had made earlier in the same position. "Don't move."

Despite this, she jumped up and tackled him to the ground. Initially, her aggression caught him off guard, but she still couldn't pry the rifle from his hands. With a swift knee to the groin, he momentarily released his grip, long enough for her to get hold of the gun. With one hand on his crotch, he reached for the firearm once more, but she twisted, jabbing an elbow into his side as she struggled to figure out how to work it.

"The eyes!" Junkrat cheered her on. "Go for his eyes!"

With her hair in his face, he instinctively grabbed on and began pulling. Screaming, she swung the butt of the rifle around, pelting him in the nose and throwing it aside. She shoved a hand in his pocket, threading his keys between her fingers and jamming them into his leg, causing him to buckle long enough for her to pull them out and scramble away.

Fumbling with the keys, she still couldn't get the cuffs unlocked.

Junkrat was kicking and squirming. "C'mon c'mon c'mon!"

Before she could get it worked out, she felt Erv's hand wrap around her ankle and start pulling her away. She reached out and clung to Junkrat by handfuls of his shorts, but he just kept jerking on her, dragging them both through the dirt little by little until Roadhog hooked the spike on the toe of his boot into Junkrat's harness. With Junkrat pummeling Erv with his wooden peg, it took her only one forceful kick to free her foot. She dropped the keys in Junkrat's still-bound hands and thrust a hand into his messenger bag. Trying to maneuver any single one of the keys into the cuff's lock, Junkrat didn't even notice.

Producing a concussion mine from the bag's hammerspace, she grabbed hold of the detonator and jumped up, rushing the guy again and pushing him backwards until he stumbled onto a parking space cap and fell flat on his back. She tossed the mine like a frisbee behind him.

While Junkrat was jiggling the keys around blindly behind his back, trying to free himself, he caught sight of what Liz was holding and glanced around the gravel and dirt. His world slowed to a crawl as he counted all the explosives she had dropped. When he saw her fingers poised over the detonator's trigger, his own fingers instinctively tightened around the key ring with white knuckles. "Cookie, no!"

There was a flash and everything went black for her.


	7. Dashboard

Jamison Fawkes never really let himself get close to anyone. It probably had a lot to do with the environment he grew up in. A lot of every-man-for-himself and cutthroat practices for the sake of survival.

So he never really expected to become friends with Mako. A large, scary, bad-ass, sociopathic biker, Jamison had picked him strictly for his intimidation factor. Mako agreed to the job for the sheer amount of wealth to be had. Business partners. But when they did finally realize that they had a genuine companionship beyond the bodyguard contract between them, it surprised them both. In retrospect, it probably shouldn't have. Both of them enjoyed violence and mayhem more than a little bit, and for how quiet Mako usually is, Jamison had plenty to say to make up for it.

It didn't happen overnight though, that's for sure. For the longest time, he didn't even know Mako's real name.

He didn't really know Lizard's either. He was pretty sure she had told them, but he wasn't paying attention then. It didn't matter at the time.

But he found himself wondering what she had said it was despite the deafening ringing in his ears from the explosions and the struggle to remove his cuffs. She was all the way across the parking lot from him, lying very still. _Probably in pieces…_

And the Lizard moniker suddenly felt disrespectful.

He finally got his hands free and moved on to Roadhog. All the while, it was steadily weighing on him more with each passing moment.

He had only known her a short while, but she was already growing on him, and he didn't know why. She was alright by his standards. She wasn't particularly attractive, but she wasn't bad looking either. She had this snarky smirk that she wore, even in the face of danger. She carried herself with confidence, or at least tried to, and it was cute. It kinda helped that for whatever reason, suspicious as it was, that she was intent on sticking with them. It made him feel wanted. A rare feeling.

Once his partner was free, he took off across the parking lot towards the indecipherable carnage where Lizard had been when she pushed in the detonator. Refusing to follow, Mako was voicing his disapproval.

Jamison shrugged him off and pointed to his ears. "I can't hear you," he half shouted, half mouthed, unable to judge the volume of his own voice. He scrambled away, knowing they didn't have much time before the authorities started showing up.

Going for his motorcycle, Mako knew Jamison wouldn't listen to him if he could. He was stubborn that way.

A sigh of relief escaped Jamison's lips as he neared the mangled bodies on the pavement. Most of it…. Most of the "pieces" were the bounty hunters that had captured them earlier, but while Lizard was in relatively better shape, she hadn't exactly made it through the explosion unscathed. Jamison scooped her up into his arms just as his cohort pulled the bike up behind him.

"Let's go, Rat!"

He didn't reply, already heading toward his seat. It was unapparent to Mako if it was because he was that upset or genuinely unable to hear him. At this point, it didn't really matter. He needed to get them out of there.

Jamison climbed in carefully, cradling the injured cookie possessively to his chest. Mako had been warning him that she would turn out to be trouble, and there was a good chance those bounty hunters wouldn't have gotten the jump on them had he not been distracted by that same debate with him outside the motel – a motel they wouldn't have even been at if it hadn't been for her. She did help them escape, though…

Mako had also insisted it would have been better for everyone if they had left her at the diner to fend for herself, and now here she was, barely clinging to life because of an explosion anyhow.

He mentally walked himself through her injuries as they rode off into the chilly desert night. He and Mako had plenty of experience with the repercussions of explosive battles. They could save her. Mostly.

She was going to need a lot of work, though.

* * *

The feverish dreams were forgotten as quickly as they came and went. The only constant was a steady humming in her head and a rhythmic squeak that she couldn't quite place. Perhaps a rusty attic vent turning in the breeze? Only there was no breeze. Maybe a malfunctioning car alarm? She tried to rationalize it, but it was too difficult to focus on anything with that dull humming that had physically manifested into a throbbing pain.

The truth is it sounded exactly like some Wile E. Coyote ring of stars circling her crown, but even in her delirium, she knew that didn't make sense.

The darkness started to give way to yellow. Just yellow.

"It's so hot…" She tried to move.

"Hog! Get over here! She's waking up!"

A growl and a crashing sound. Something covered her face. "I'm drowning," she whispered dramatically.

"Shh, Cookie. It's okay, just breath in."

A rush of panic hit her. "No, I can't!"

"Just breathe. You have to go back to sleep." Another crash. "I'm not… not done."

All was dark again, and time ceased to exist. Only that same squeaking. _Cuckoo. Cuckoo._

She rolled back through the last known footage her brain could conjure, trying to grasp onto the last authentic memory, but it was just snippets here and there of motels and fires with Junkrat dancing happily among the flames. He came closer and closer until she felt smothered. She tried to speak to him, but she had no voice. When she reached out to touch him, he handed her phone to her. Her texts from McCree open on the screen, she tried to reread them but her eyes kept jumping to the end:

_"Good luck Liz."_

She jarred. "Jesse!"

Awakening, the first thing she saw was Junkrat's face twisted in concern. "Nope, try again."

She narrowed her gaze in annoyance. "Junkrat," she groaned.

"Oh, good! You're okay." He half-smiled. "I was starting to wonder if Roadie had dosed you too high." She tried to sit up, but he gently placed a hand on her chest, guiding her back down. "You might wanna rest for a bit more, actually."

She was stiff and sore but too hard-headed to care. "No. No, I'm fine. Let me just –" A sharp pain shot through her side accompanied by an unfamiliar one in her arm. She grimaced, halting her attempt to move.

His mech hand moved to hers, but she quickly realized his grasp felt foreign. Her eyes widened. "Wait –"

"You almost carked it, Cookie," he said somberly. "We did what we could." Remembering what it had been like for him, he suddenly decided this was harder than he thought it was going to be and found it difficult to look at her as he brought their hands into her view. When she saw that the hand he was holding – _her_ hand – was a shiny, purple clone of his prosthetic, all she did was gasp. He didn't know what to say either. "I…uh, I made this for you. The arm, I mean. I didn't know what else to do."

He became acutely aware that she wasn't attempting to move her hand in his at all. He gently brushed his fingers between hers, urging her to bend them. "You have full control over it, Cookie."

Completely forgetting about her pain, her upper body darted up and she withdrew from him. She was flooded with awe and anger to the point of speechless as she watched the fingers wiggle the way she intended. Almost. She could feel them without feeling them, like her hand was pins and needles inside a glove – a thick one. She tried to focus on every sensation as she opened and closed her fist. Her hand was there but not quite.

Junkrat still couldn't find the right words. He awkwardly held up his prosthetic, mirroring her movements a little. "At least it wasn't your right hand, eh?"

"I'm left-handed," she replied automatically, deadpan.

He sighed. "We couldn't send you to the hospital, understand? You were right. You have a bounty on your head."

Never taking her eyes off the metal object attached to her, she asked, "Really?"

"Heh, yeah. They're calling you 'The Cook.'" He studied her face, reading the angst and frustration behind the untiring brick wall she had put up. It reminded him of Mako.

Her regular senses were slowly starting to return. She glanced around the current hotel room until her pack of cigarettes caught her eye. "Where are we?

Junkrat noticed and grabbed them, gingerly placing a cigarette in the palm of her new hand for her. "Mexico."

She glared as her fingers pinched around it and broke it. The junker's bushy blonde eyebrows furled, and he handed her another. He winced as she broke this one, too, seemingly on purpose. "Cookie –"

"I never should have gone back for you!" she hissed to herself. Her expression burned the way his hair did.

He sighed again. "I know what you're going through –"

"No, you don't," she seethed.

He cleared his throat, holding his mech arm up and giving her a little wave. "Ye-e-es. I do."

"You ruined my life."

"I know it's a hell of a thing to wake up to, and it's understandable that you're angry, but there's no way your arm coulda been saved, even if you went to the hospital. Trust me."

"I'm in a foreign country, out of a job, wanted for murder, down to three appendages…"

"Better count 'em again, mate."

"What?!" She tossed the blanket off of her in an instant only to see both her legs bandaged but intact. "I don't… understand…"

"It was just a joke. Lighten up."

"It's not funny!"

"Okay, yeah, maybe it was in poor taste, but hey at least you still have most of your hair."

All she did was scowl, refusing to check. She did notice it wasn't touching her neck anymore, though.

"Look, no one made you come with us, Cookie. In fact, I tried more than once to make you go home. Don't try to put the blame on me."

"None of this would have happened if you hadn't blown up my father's diner!"

His eyebrow cocked. "That diner belonged to your dad?"

"When he was alive, yes."

"That's… unfortunate to say the least, but it does seem to me you had some issues long before you met me."

"That's none of your business!"

"Hey, I never said it was." He pulled a cigarette from her pack and lit it, taking a long drag. "All I'm saying is things could have been worse. Several times over you could have died, but you haven't. Did you think about that?" He rose from his chair, placing the lit cigarette between her pouting lips before turning to walk away. "Sorry about your arm, ta for saving us, and you're welcome for us saving you."

"Leaving for good this time?" Her scorn unwavered so far, but something in the way he lingered at the door softened her. "Wait!" She successfully pulled the cigarette away from her mouth with her new hand and looked down at it. "So, you're…"

"Not abandoning you? No." He grabbed a towel off a nearby hook and threw it over his shoulder. "Just giving you some time alone to process things. I'll be at the pool bar with Roadhog."

Alone again, she mumbled and bitched to herself as she clumsily smoked her cigarette. She threw her legs over the edge of the bed and slowly put her weight on them, expecting them to give under her but they didn't. They were just fine. She crossed the room to the dresser for her partially melted phone that laid there, attempting to flip it open, but it wouldn't budge. Placing her cigarette on the edge of the dresser, she put more pressure on the phone with her new mech hand, and it instantly broke the cheap plastic in two. In a rage, she pitched the phone across the room, taking a chunk of drywall out where it hit.

Scratching at the itchy prosthetic, she snatched her cigarette back up and reached for the curtains beside her, throwing them aside to see for herself what shitty one-horse town they were settled in now. To her surprise, a fifth-story view of white sand, palm trees, and crystal clear cobalt waters stretched before her as far as the eye could see in a sort of curious infinity akin to that of the desert, only with more life. Her breath stilled in reverence.

She wanted to touch it. She slowly slid the glass doors to the balcony open, and salty air coated her lungs for the first time. She tried to stay mad, but the calming sounds of the waves below and the gentle breeze above began to erode at her ire. All of her worries took a willful backseat as she tentatively grasped onto an abstract thought about how much bigger the world really is. Remembering what it was like when she lost her finger and how she eventually got over it, an arm seemed like a small price for her ticket to a new life – to see it all. Especially since she got a replacement, itchy though it may be...

She had already lost so much, it was just a pittance in the grand scheme of things.

Her abandoned cigarette had burned all the way down to the filter, and it was already out by the time she noticed, flicking it off the balcony. Noting that the western sun was already making its way to the horizon, she caved, rushing out of the room so she could feel some of that seafoam between her toes before it got dark.

In the elevator, she hastily removed her boots, hanging onto them by the laces as she exited the resort barefoot. Paying no mind to Junkrat and Roadhog, she tossed her boots and chef coat towards the bar as she dashed past them and down the wooden steps to the sand. The moment her toes sank into the soft, warm grains, her pace quickened until she reached the water, coming to an abrupt stop at its edge. In an instant, wind whipped across her and the water swelled over her ankles, lapping at her bandages and passing over the light burns there, cooling her. Salt burned at little blisters and abrasions she wasn't even aware of, but the sensation was fleeting, quickly replaced with relief. She felt grounded in some sort of cosmic oneness that she couldn't quite explain, and she stood there definitively, feeling no need to do anything else but be right there watching the sun dive.

Some time had passed before she noticed Junkrat at her side. She briefly glanced back at the weird trail his peg leg had left in the sand behind him. "How long have you been standing there?"

"Not long."

The tide had pulled out some, and the water wasn't touching her feet as frequently. She sat down in the sand, nuzzling her butt into the now cooler sand and stretching her legs out towards the retreating waves.

Junkrat shoved his hands in his pockets. "There it is. Now you've seen the ocean."

"You remembered."

"I still don't see what the big deal is." He plopped down beside her, and they continued to watch the sun sink in silence for a while. Just as its edge was touching the deep blue of the horizon, he spoke again. "If you really want to, you can go in the water. We can always redress your bandages later."

"And the arm?"

"It'll be fine. Better than mine, probably." He looked down at his own prosthetic, opening and closing his fist. "I knew what I was doing this time."

His comment went unnoticed as Liz pushed herself up and ran out into ocean, not slowing until she was waste deep. After a pause, she dove in and began paddling outward.

Junkrat sprang up and kept an eye on her shrinking figure. "Careful of the tide, Cookie!"

She gave him the finger from her new hand and flipped onto her back to just float.

Twilight began to blanket the sky when Roadhog joined Junkrat on the shore, grunting and staggering, still clinging to a mostly empty fifth of tequila.

Junkrat answered his unspoken concern, always seeming to understand the message behind his wordless noises. "It's a been a rough few days for the Cookie. Let her have her fun a little while longer." He kicked some sand at a passing crab. "Ya know, I've been thinking."

"You really shouldn't," Roadhog grumbled.

"Maybe we do owe her something for the diner."

He snorted.

"She _did_ save us!" Junkrat reminded him. "In case you forgot."

He stared at Junkrat in intimidating silence.

"It was her father's diner, y'know."

"Why do you care?"

"Maybe I shouldn't –"

"You shouldn't," he growled, confident that would end Junkrat's sappy rant.

It only stalled it. "She didn't deserve to have that taken away from her any more than you deserved to have your home taken away from you by the Omnics."

"It was your home, too."

"I don't remember what it was like before, Mako. You know that. I was just a baby." His gaze drifted back over the darkening ocean. "What if there was something we could do to make amends? Karma and junk."

No reply.

"I'm starting to get an idea."

"How could blowing something up help?"

Junkrat sneered. "Boy, you sure are a Chatty Cathy tonight."

"It's the booze," he said as though he suddenly remembered he still had some. He finished off the rest of it and let the bottle fall beside him where it hit the edge of a rock just right and shattered.

"If we play our cards right," Junkrat reached for the bottle's neck and quickly started drawing lines with a sharp corner in the sand, "we may not have to blow anything up at all."

Roadhog flopped down beside the sand scribbles. "Then why bother?"

Junkrat continued drawing with a giggle. "Well, okay, maybe just a little something."

* * *

Liz didn't want to come back to shore, but the sun was almost completely down, and she could no longer see what was just below the surface. She reluctantly made her way back. Once she was able to stand, she emerged into the night air. Her upper body would have been chilled under normal circumstances, but the mild burns in various places were so comforted by the coolness that it didn't seem to matter. Her eyes instinctively started scanning the beach for Junkrat and Roadhog, but they were nowhere to be seen. Once completely out, she began trudging up the sand dunes to the poolside bar, her soaked clothes still pouring a trail of puddles in her wake. Her hair, now short from the accident, required not much more but a palm through it to rid it of most of its moisture.

Nestled in some tropical foliage, the bar was lit with colorful string lanterns and littered with empty beer bottles and hurricane glasses with little umbrellas, but only a handful of people were still hanging around. It was easy to see Junkrat and Roadhog weren't there. With no key to the room, she grabbed an abandoned beach towel off a stool to wrap herself in and took a seat at the bar to wait for them to find her.

The bartender, an older model Omnic, glided to her after a moment. She shuddered. _Figures._

"What can a get for you?"

"Piña colada."

"Do you have a tab already?"

"Um, yes?"

"What name is it under?"

"…McCree."

Without questioning it, he turned away to prepare her drink. She tried to hide her surprise that had worked. Once she received her drink, she nursed at it as she stared back out at the ocean, still taken away by its massiveness. It didn't disappear into the blackness of night like she thought it would. Not with the moon and stars above reflected like glitter on its rippled surface. Lost in its magic, she didn't think about her wounds at all and was apathetic that she made it through a couple more frozen drinks with no sign of her cohorts.

So completely zen in that moment, the rising sound of distant police sirens coming closer didn't catch her attention. She wasn't aware of them at all until a racing vending truck with a giant light-up taco on top slid into her direct field of vision, skidding through the sand just past the pool's deck with Junkrat dangling out the passenger window.

"Cookie! Let's gooooo!"

Jostled from her meditative state, her head snapped into the direction of the sirens, and she knew without question they were after Junkrat and Roadhog. "Oh, for fuck's sake!" She looked on the floor under the barstools for her boots and coat she had carelessly tossed that way earlier. Finding them in an instant, she dove for them and took off towards the food truck with them still dangling in her hand. Her feet were barely out of the sand when the truck resumed motion once more, making an impossibly sharp turn away from the resort and back on the road the way they had come, just as the cops were flying past them, squealing to a stop and almost piling on top of one another as they tried to maneuver back in their pursuit.

Being erratically tossed around the truck's cab, Liz struggled to get her boots on while Junkrat shot out the passenger window with his frag launcher. "Can't this thing go any faster?" she complained.

"You got a problem, you drive," Roadhog spitefully grumbled.

"Fine, I will! Move over!"

She put one hand on the wheel and shoved herself over him, practically sitting in his lap until he moved aside. Forced out of his role as getaway driver, he took a door to the back of the truck, squeezing past their motorcycle they had somehow crammed back there and kicking the back door open where he promptly began firing at the authorities on their tail.

The truck only slowed for a moment as Liz stretched her booted foot down to the gas pedal, pushing it straight to the floor, but it was long enough for the police to regroup behind them. The truck accelerated sluggishly, but once it had worked through all its gears, it was surprisingly fast.

Liz steadied the wheel and her eyes focused far off in the distance, preparing to swerve in and out of traffic. This time of night, there wasn't much, but there were just enough oblivious, drunk patrons jaywalking under string lights and wandering the streets to make things interesting. A small crowd up ahead blocked the way and Liz prepared to change course. She reached across the cab and grabbed onto Junkrat's harness, yanking him backwards.

"What was that for?!"

"Keep inside. It's about to get tight."

She suddenly took the thing down a narrow alleyway, turning so fast it teetered on three wheels momentarily as she completed the curve. Once more, the police cruisers were taken off guard, sliding past the alleyway and jumbling up into a minor fender bender to avoid barreling through the people.

Liz heard the sirens fading behind them as she flew through the alleyway, dragging trash cans down the walls and leaving frightened cats screaming and practically climbing the bricks. They lost the light-up taco to a metal fire escape and picked up a "LumériCo" banner that fluttered across the windshield just as they emerged from the alleyway. Unable to see, Liz slammed on the brakes, and the truck spun, coming to a stop as the front fender just barely clipped a concrete fountain in the town square.

The force of the stop slammed the rear doors shut with Roadhog safely inside but sent Junkrat hanging out of his window by only his booted foot. One lone cruiser with lights still flashing emerged from the alleyway, gliding past and making a pass around the fountain back for them.

"Grab the sign!" Liz commanded Junkrat as she put the truck in reverse.

He was still mostly outside of the vehicle when she threw it back into drive and took off again. Holding onto the banner, it unfurled beside them, its end rising up like a kite as they picked up speed, and he let it go into the breeze. It flew behind them, wrapping around the front of the cruiser. They heard a screech and a crash. Junkrat looked back to see the cop car crushed like an accordion on a brick wall that was still tumbling down on it while smoke poured out from under the hood. After a few moments, the fire reached the gas tank, and it erupted into flames, the blaze completely engulfing the car in an ever-moving globe of fire.

"Now _that_ was beautiful!"

The flaming wreck shrank from his view and he returned to his seat, pointing to the right at an inland-facing ramp. "There! Take that road to get to the highway!"

With that, she hung a sharp left onto an unpaved road.

"What are you doing?"

"They expect us to go for the highway," she said matter-of-factly. "So we won't."


	8. No Problem

All the street lights disappeared and inhabited buildings became scarce. By the time there was mostly emptiness around them, they could no longer hear any sirens or signs of civilization. Not long after that, the sounds of the ocean started to grow once more. The road continued for miles before it finally came to a stop at a deserted building left in ruins most likely by the war that had ravaged the land so many years ago. Liz eased the truck into a partially collapsed shed before she turned the engine off.

Junkrat looked over at her with that maniacal smile of his. "That was fun."

She sighed and returned his stare. "Why a taco truck?"

His arms flew out with a squeal. "Surprise! It's for you!"

Liz's eye twitched in restrained anger. "Why?!"

"It's a sorry-about-the-diner prezzy." His hand caressed the dashboard. "You can take this baby wherever you want and just start cooking."

She was speechless. Junkrat took it as a good sign, but it wasn't the kind of speechless he thought. She jumped up out her seat and went to the back of the truck.

"Go ahead, check it out," he encouraged her.

Finding Roadhog already rifling through the cabinets and coolers, she put a hand on his arm. "You okay back here?"

His only reply was a snort as he put together a plate of nachos.

"I'll take that as a yes," she replied, using her grip on him to boost herself over the motorcycle and out the back, straight towards the beach.

Junkrat followed, narrowing his eyes at his partner. "Way to go, lugl!" He punched him in the shoulder as he reached past him for a bottle of tequila in the cabinet. "Ya set her off."

His mumble of, "Idiot," went ignored as Junkrat jumped down into the sand after her.

"You don't have to thank us," he called after her into the vast darkness. "It was the least we could do."

"No shit." She let herself fall to the ground at the top of a dune overlooking the shore.

"Oi!" He jogged to catch up and sat down beside her. "What's wrong, Cookie? Don't you like it?"

"I'm not a cook anymore. I'm an outlaw like you. What the hell am I supposed to do with a food truck?"

"I dunno," he retorted in sing-song. "Maybe drive it like a bat outta hell away from coppers?"

She half smiled. "I don't know if you noticed, but it's not exactly the best getaway vehicle."

"And yet you got us away anyhow. I thought you told us back at the diner that you didn't drive."

"No, I said I don't have a car. I know how to drive."

"Too right." He gave her a playful shove. "Good on ya, by the way. Maybe you really are cut out for this after all."

"I never really wanted to be a cook anyway." She directed her attention back to the crashing waves. "So what now?"

Junkrat looked down at her bare, reddish legs. "We rebandage those wounds." The seal on the liquor bottle was easily broken with a quick twist, and he took a gulp, handing it off to her. "Here."

With a shrug, she took a swig. Coughing, she wiped her arm across her mouth. "Holy shit, that burns!"

"I didn't say drink it!" He rummaged through his messenger bag until he produced a roll of gauze. "Besides, that's nothing compared to, well heh heh... Just wait." He held his hand out to her, and she passed it back. "Put your legs in my lap," he said, taking another pull from the bottle.

She complied, swallowing down a twinge of excitement as he began to remove her boots. With one hand under her knees, he drizzled the tequila down the length of her legs. She immediately squealed and jerked. "Fuuuu-!"

He held her ankles to keep from getting kicked in the face. Once she quit struggling, he handed the bottle back to her and ran his hands up and down her legs with a featherlike touch, displacing the lingering drops of liquor. "What did I tell ya? Burns, eh?"

"Like the devil." Goosebumps crawled up her calves, and she let out her breath as the sting evaporated under his fingertips. She tilted the bottle up for another drink, only this time, it wasn't so bad.

He began wrapping the gauze loosely around her limbs. "Sorry about that, Cookie, but it had to be done since you went swimming. We don't want you to get an infection."

The fuzziness from her cocktails earlier began to mingle with the tequila and other recent activities, and she watched intensely as his hands worked the bandages around her. Her skin didn't look nearly as bad as she expected. "You really know what you're doing, huh?"

"You could say I've had some practice," he said, not looking up.

She nodded at a small structure beyond him. "There's a restroom right there. Couldn't you have just, I dunno, _rinsed_ me?"

He briefly glanced over his shoulder at the public facility she was referring to. "If the plumbing even still works, would you really trust the purity of that water?"

"This ain't the Outback, amigo."

Just finishing up, he laughed. "Yeah, you're right. I keep forgetting most everyone else doesn't have the radiation problem we do back home." His hands rested on her ample thighs, mindlessly playing the fringe at the edge of her now toasted cutoffs as he continued to daydream of Junkertown. She cleared her throat, and he looked up at her with those crazy golden eyes. She led their shared gaze to the fingers near her inner thigh, and he snatched his hands away. "Oh! Sorry." He took the bottle from her for a long awkward pull. "I, uh…"

Removing her legs from his lap, she grabbed the bottle back. "Don't hog all the tequila, Junk Boy!"

"Junk Boy?" He laughed at the nickname. "Fair enough, since I keep calling you Cookie."

"What happened to Lizard, by the way?"

"You're too cute for a name like Lizard." Realizing what he had just said, he tried to gloss over it so it would go unnoticed. "So, uh, what is your real name, anyway?"

It didn't go unnoticed. "Liz," she replied with amusement.

"Ohhhh! Riiiight!" He face-palmed. "Haha, I guess the Lizard thing makes sense now. So… should I call you Liz?"

"Nah," she said with a grin. "I like Cookie."

He returned her smile. "I do, too."

Easing closer to him, she leaned against his shoulder and closed her eyes. "I may have misjudged you."

He jerked in surprise at her gesture of affection.

"Can I call you Jamison?"

"…If you want."

"What about Jamie?"

His smile crooked, he looked down at the round cheek resting on his arm, rosy from the booze, and passively admired the length of her eyelashes. "Maybe. Sometimes. But not all the time."

"And Mako…?"

"I wouldn't push your luck, mate."

She scoffed. "Why doesn't he like me?"

"He's just doing his job. He's supposed to be my bodyguard. And he's used to it being just the two of us."

"I'm not really surprised. I don't really fit in anywhere. I mean, I have horrible social skills…"

"You're a little abrasive, sure, but that's better than being a doormat by a long shot."

"You don't understand. I didn't have much to begin with, plain brown hair, chubby face, no boobs to speak of, yet my ass is too big…"

"It's called curves, Cookie," he said with a smile. "It works for you."

Suddenly self-conscious, she quit leaning on him and brushed her metal fingers forward through her chestnut hair, but it was no longer long enough for her to hide behind. Her sullen eyes passed over her new prosthetic as it dropped in front of her. "And now this! I feel so… _un_ human."

He sighed. "Lots of people have mechanical limbs, Cookie."

Her eyes stayed lowered. "I don't know why I'm telling you all this."

"You'll get used to it. It's just gonna be a while. It might get worse before it gets better, what with the phantom pains and all –"

"Phantom pains?"

"But if it gets unbearable, Roadhog's got the medicine. And I have the experience. We'll get ya through this."

She took a calming breath. "I'll get by. I always do. I'm fine, really. Other than the itching… and feeling like I'm half an Omnic."

Junkrat's concern disappeared in a flash. "Don't say that! I fucking hate those things!"

Startled by his sudden change in demeanor, she muttered a curious, "Really?"

"Yes! Take it back!" He glared at her with absolute gravity.

"Ok, ok, I take it back!" She laughed lightly. "I'm actually kinda relieved to hear that you hate Omnics, too."

"You knew where I was from. You weren't really surprised, were ya?"

"Not really, but you never know. All these bleeding-heart activists that want them to have equal rights must not have ever lost anyone or anything close to them in the war, or else they might rethink their stance. I'll never understand them."

"And you thought there was a possibility that I was one of them."

She smiled weakly. "No, I don't suppose you're the bleeding-heart type."

"Oh, I've got a bleeding heart, Cookie. Just not for them. The Omnics are the reason everything is so fucked. As someone who has been constantly shit on me whole life, I'm all for justice, but we're just supposed to _give_ them our homes because they're _unhappy_? How is that fair?"

"My mom was one of those allies advocating for their rights and ended up being killed by one of them anyway."

His brow furled in dismay. "I'm so sorry, Cookie."

"Don't be. I was too young to remember anyhow, but they _are_ the reason I never got to know my mom. I'll never forgive them for that."

"Pieces of _junk_!" He jumped right back into his rant, her addition only fueling it more. "And then the corporate fat cats and all those suits at the banks who already have all the money and power are lining the politicians' pockets and come along and say, 'Go ahead. Give them whatever they want' to keep the 'peace'! Only it doesn't affect them in their lush ivory towers, and in the end there's no peace for us battlers down here!"

Liz was enthralled by his passionate rambles. "I don't think I've ever seen you get so excited over anything that didn't involve explosives."

"They need to pay! And they will. Heaps."

"So all this mayhem and destruction –"

"Just the tip of the iceburg, mate. It's all building towards something. Just you wait and see."

"At least you're ambitious." Her expression fell once again. "I used to feel like things were building towards something for me, but every time I turn around, things are just getting worse. I wanted to blame my current situation on you, but now that I've had the chance to think about it, I know better. Things would have gotten mucked up with or without you. One way or another. Everything that has ever mattered to me keeps getting taken away. When Jesse returned, I really thought this was my chance. That things were going to start looking up, but I pretty much blew that, too."

"How?"

"It doesn't really matter. He never really knew me at all, and if something was going to happen between us, it should have happened by now. And to think, he's the only person I've ever put in the effort for."

"I know what you mean. I was in love once. Horrid, scornful cunt, that one…" he griped quietly to himself. "It's not worth beating yourself up over, though."

"If he never wanted me, I don't see why anyone else would."

As he handed her the bottle of tequila, he found himself thinking that his comment about her cuteness must have slipped under the radar after all.

She killed it with a sigh. "He's a lost cause."

"Since when? Since like five minutes ago when you started hitting on me?"

As intended, his petty jab snapped her right out of her pity party. "I'm not hitting on you!"

"That sounded awful defensive"

"Look, I thought I was in love with him for a very long time, okay? I'm just now starting to question things..."

"So does this mean you're giving up on Jesse for good?" he asked playfully.

"Why?" She sneered back at him. "Trying to gauge whether or not you stand a chance with me?"

He shook his head. "No. I don't have to. I'm pure machismo. I can have anyone I want."

She laughed. "You're kidding, right?"

" _Am_ I kidding, Cookie?" He motioned with his fingers down his torso. "Have you _seen_ these abs?"

"I have, actually," she said stifling a giggle with her hand. "You never wear a shirt."

He smirked. "I bet even your precious _Jesse_ isn't built like this."

"Oh, he ain't too shabby himself, though."

"Yeah? Well, I bet he's no engineer."

"Oh, so now you're an engineer?"

"Where do you think all of our weapons and explosives come from? I even built this rip tire," he said, pointing a thumb to the one he had been lugging around since they'd met.

"What the hell even is that thing?"

"A motorized bomb."

"You're kidding," she exclaimed with mock disbelief.

"Yeah, I'm saving it for a rainy day, ha ha." He unstrapped it and placed it motor side-up beside them so she could get a better view. "It can climb walls and it doesn't blow until I tell it to."

"So you made a thing that blows up? Get out!"

Her sarcasm didn't escape him. "I can make more than just explosives, ya wowser."

"Like?"

He waved the digits on his mech hand, promptly taking hers in it as well.

"Oh. That's right." She stopped guffawing, staring down at them as he intertwined his yellow-painted digits in her purple ones. She lifted her gaze back up, looking deeply into his eyes. "How did you learn how to make all this stuff?"

Really beginning to feel the effects of the liquor, he swayed a bit. "Weeell, I pick things up here and there. It was mostly the Anarchist's Cookbook, though."

"Why am I not surprised?" Amused, she took his other hand. "I guess you win, Jamison…"

His heart skipped a beat when he heard her say his name like that.

"…I've completely forgotten all about Jesse What's-His-Name," she teased. "I'm all yours, now."

 _Was that a joke?_ His eyes wide, he suddenly withdrew from her grasp to act nonchalant, reclining back on his tire with his hands laced behind his head.

Not so easily deterred, Liz put a palm on either edge of it and leaned over him, her face upside-down to his."I had a lot of fun earlier, by the way.

"Me too, Cookie. Me toooo."

"And I never did thank you for the food truck. It really was a thoughtful gift."

"Heh, so does that make us even?"

"Tacos are my favorite food, actually, so I guess so."

He yawned, and his eyes stayed closed. "I'm going to hold you to that."

Before long he began to snore, and she pouted. "You falling asleep on me?"

"I'm buggered, Cookie!"

"But I'm not."

"I would imagine not with as long as we had you sedated."

"Please, don't go to sleep yet."

His eyes popped back open. "Why are you still in me face?"

She looked down on him with lazy, half-lidded eyes. "To get you to do literally a _nything_ else."

He placed his hands on the sides of her head, squeezing her cheeks inward until she looked like a chipmunk. "Anything?" he challenged with skepticism.

"Anything," she echoed through her involuntarily pursed mouth.

Without warning, he pulled her face to his and pressed their lips together tightly.

She froze in shock, delaying her instinct to pull away, but when she did, she did with force. "Anything but _that_!" she barked.

"You said 'anything'." He folded his hands behind his head once more.

"Yeah, you kinda overplayed your hand, there." She turned away from him, her voice becoming heavy with sadness again. "It's okay, though. It's all my fault, really."

He snuck a concerned glance at her out of the corner of his eyes. "What's that now?"

"I guess I'm just… lonely."

He nodded. "I could tell when I first met you," he said with a disturbing amount of confidence.

She swung her head around to him, her face wracked in horror.

"But who isn't?" He smiled, one bushy blonde eyebrow rising as his lids slid shut once more. "You don't have to worry about that anymore, Cookie. Ya got us." He nestled into the sand a little deeper as his voice trailed off into dreamy mumbling. "We're not gonna leave you this time… Mako and I …will take care… of you…"

* * *

Kicking herself for leaving her cigarettes back in the original hotel room, Liz started back to the truck to look for all the packs from the gas station robbery. Her lips were still tingling in the ghost of what had been her first kiss in a long time, and she kept mentally scolding herself for kind of enjoying it as she trudged up the dunes.

In the cab, she found Roadhog asleep with the seat reclined back, covered in nacho crumbs. She lifted the bike keys off of him and went to check the sidecar compartments. Finding what she was looking for – cigarettes and a lifetime supply of matchbooks – she took what she needed along with the stuffed Pachimari. On her way back out of the truck, she returned the keys to Roadhog's pocket and placed the plushie in his arms.

She began to stroll, admiring the night sky. Not a cloud in sight, and out there in the boonies where there was no power for miles, the sky shimmered with so many stars it looked like some were made up. It already felt like home.

The sea breeze had been steadily rustling through the brush, but after a moment, even in her inebriated state, it eventually became apparent that something was following her. She came to a stop and blinked slowly, reaching for her knife. "I know you're there," she said out loud in case it was a person. "Why don't we get this over with?"

The movement stopped, and a moment of terrifying silence passed before a figure stepped out. She was better prepared for a chupacabra attack than this. "Jesse?"

"Hey, Lizard," he said in that cowboy drawl. "You've been busy, huh?"

Composing herself, she slid the knife back into her pocket and mockingly put her hands up. "Ya got me."

He nodded toward her arm. "New hand?"

A smirk crossed her face as she ran the metal fingers through what was left of her coiff. "You didn't even notice my haircut."

"I tried to warn ya about these guys."

"I did it to myself."

"Whatever you say, darlin'."

She thumped her butt aside and lowered her hands. "So what is this? End of the line?"

"Not for you." He brought a light to the tip of the cigar he had been holding between his lips. "Your bounty's no good to my fence."

"Don't take my boys in, Jess," she pleaded with a head shake.

" _Your_ boys? What the hell, Liz?"

"They're not that bad, really. They're just products of their environment like anyone else. Like you."

"They're nothing like me."

"They're from a different place, but they're outlaws, just the same as you. You and I both know what a terrible state the world is in, and the little people shouldn't be punished for that. It's not their fault. They're just fighting back the only way they know how."

"What happened Liz? One of 'em make goo-goo eyes at ya?"

Her smirk was instantly gone. "What is _that_ supposed to mean?"

"Ya obviously got a thing for one or both of them."

"Goddammit, Jesse –"

"This is why I was so worried about you, Liz. I know how easily manipulated you are."

"Oh, you do? So is that what you've been doing all these years?! Manipulating me?"

"Now, Liz, it ain't like that. I have a special place in my heart for you, but you –"

"I may have seemed easy to manipulate to _you_ , but I guess you never noticed it's because you're… the only one... who…" She trailed off, never able to say the words to him she wanted.

His face turned away with a sigh. "Look, darlin', I'm sorry. What do you want me to do?"

"Leave. Just turn around and walk away like you never found us."

"I can't do that."

She shot a worried look behind her towards where the others were sleeping. "Why them, Jess? Why can't you just collect some other bounty?"

"You know why."

"No, I really don't."

"They really haven't told you?"

"Haven't told me what?"

"About the God AI."

"What's a God AI?"

"It's a program capable of taking control over anything with a chip in it. They've probably got it on an SD card or something."

She leered at him for a moment while she considered this. "So you _are_ still working for Overwatch, is that it?"

"No, darlin', there's no Overwatch anymore, remember? The Petras Act put a stop to them, and that's that."

Her leer was not quick to fade. "Like the law has ever dictated your actions in the past." She shook her head, reaching for another cigarette. "I don't know anything about any God AI."

"So that skinny loudmouth hasn't said anything about his 'treasure'?"

"Oh, yeah, definitely, but he never said it was a God AI. How can you be so sure that's what it is?"

"Not sure, just an educated guess. There are a lot of signs there."

"That doesn't sound like something he would call a treasure. At any rate, I'm sure they don't have anything like that on them."

"I believe you, Liz. Or believe you believe that. I can tell when you're lying."

"Oh, good," she snided as she lit her cigarette. "I was worried you didn't know me at all."

"Don't go getting all cocky. I'm still not leaving here without them or the program."

"I've been through all their stuff, Jesse. If they do have this 'God AI', it's not currently in their possession, so it wouldn't do you any good to take them in anyhow."

"That so?"

"It is. Do you know why I left with them in the first place?"

"I really don't have a clue."

"I was going to bring them in to you."

He chuckled. "Yeah, good job there. You have any idea how hard it was to catch up to ya'll after you crossed the border?"

"That's a whole other story, and if I was conscious when that happened, I would have stopped them."

"Conscious?"

"Look just… I'll get you that God AI, Jess. You don't have to worry about that. Now that I know what I'm actually looking for, it should be much easier to find."

"Heh heh, sure ya will."

"It'll be no problem. Just give me some time. If they have it, I'll find out where it is, and I'll get it for you. Just…leave them alone, okay? Come check in with me a little later on, and I'll get it to you."

"I'd be crazy to go along with that." He shook his head with a chuckle. "Dammit, Liz. Alright, you can be my little double agent. But I'll have my eye on you."

"From a distance, of course," she added almost in a command.

"But not too far." Taking a few steps until he was inches from her face, he put a finger under her chin and tilted her lips towards his. "I know you won't believe me when I say it now, but I'm a fool for ya." He gave her a small, cavalier kiss, just promising enough to leave someone as infatuated as her breathless. As quickly as it happened, it was over, and he immediately turned away, already disappearing into the shadows.

All was forgotten about the kiss from Junkrat as her fingertips hesitantly reached for the lingering warmth on her lips, and her stomach did a flop in that old familiar flutter.

_Goddamn you, Jesse._


	9. Overkill

Still staring at the back of his eyelids , the sunrise was beginning to warm Jamison's face. A bit of dry mouth reminded him he had hit the piss the night before.

_Not enough to be hungover, at least._

Content to lie there in the sand just a little longer, he recapped the previous night's activities. He suddenly remembered he had kissed Cookie, and his eyes snapped open.

Looking around, he didn't see her anywhere. Realizing he was stiff from his poor sleeping arrangements, he pushed himself up and strapped the tire back on. After only a few laborious steps towards the ocean for a morning slash, he recalled Cookie mentioning a bathroom and decided to head that way instead.

As he neared the facility, he could faintly hear running water through the crashing waves. Groggily evacuating his bladder, he was oblivious that the sound was Cookie until he heard singing swell from the other side of the wall:

 

"Myyy heeeart should be well-schooled

'Cause I've been fooled in the past… _"_

 

He looked up at the top of the stall, noticing steam coming over where the wall didn't quite reach the ceiling. Finished with his business, he lingered in admiration of her crooning.

 

"And still I faaall in love too easily

I fall in love too fast

I fall in love too terribly hard

For love to ever laaast."

 

Overthinking the candid moment he was eavesdropping on, he absent-mindedly flushed the toilet, and the heartfelt vocals turned to screeching. Once he realized what he'd done, he was filled with remorse. "I didn't mean to –"

"Junkrat?!"

"Please, don't stop on my account."

There was a pause. "That was the end of the song," she replied flatly, feeling several shades of vulnerable from being caught singing in the nude.

He moved closer to the barely adequate barrier standing between them, placing a hand against it. "Can we talk?"

"Right now?!"

Her perceived absurdity of his request went ignored. "I feel like last night needs to be addressed."

"How's that?"

"I just want to apologize if I made you uncomfortable or gave you the wrong idea." The hand he wasn't leaning on gestured with his speaking despite her not being able to see. "It was just a friendly kiss, that's all. I didn't even use any tongue…"

"What kiss?" she interrupted in a mild panic, thinking of McCree.

"Wait. Did I dream that?"

"Oh, right!" she exclaimed as the recollection hit her. "No, that happened. We were just drunk, though."

"I wasn't that off my face," he mused.

"It didn't mean anything. You said so yourself. Already forgotten, okay?"

His eyebrow involuntarily cocked. "Just like that?"

"Just like that."

He took a step back away from the wall standing between them as the revelation that it really had meant nothing sank in. "That's a little disappointing," he murmured under his breath.

"Did you say something?" Liz called to him, but she didn't get a reply. "Jamison?" Still nothing. She cut the water off and listened intently for any indication that he was still there. With a towel wrapped around her, she opened the shower stall and peeked her head out. "Junkrat?" Deciding he was gone, she went for her clothes. On top was the roll of gauze he left there for her to rebandage her own legs. She took the gauze in her hand, staring down at it. For a brief moment, she considered that maybe she had hurt his feelings by downplaying the kiss.

He had also shared a bed with her like it was nothing and just walked in on her in the shower to have a conversation. That's just the kind of person he was, oblivious to personal space.

She began wrapping her legs.

_Nah, it didn't mean anything to either one of us._

* * *

He tried not to let the perceived rejection get to him as he strolled back to the truck. After all, he hadn't intentionally sought after her to begin with. So why did he feel so bad, anyhow?

In search of the answer, the highlights of their conversation the night before rolled through his head, and without realizing it, he was humming the song she had been singing.

"Were you _humming?"_

The booming interrogatory from his bodyguard snapped him out of it. "Was I?"

"Where's the Sheila?"

"Hmm? Oh she's taking a shower," he said with a careless gesture behind him.

Roadhog just shook his head as the gangly junker came to a stop beside him. "You didn't."

"Did what?"

He just growled.

"Did what?!" Jamison repeated aggressively.

"You really going to pretend _this time_ that you don't know what I'm saying?"

"Nothing happened!" he snapped in defense, suddenly acknowledging his meaning. "When have you ever known me to root the help?"

"You were humming, for fuck's sake."

"I hum all the time."

No response.

"You think you're _so_ funny!" He snatched the bike keys out of Mako's pocket.

"No one's laughing."

"I am," he asserted as he moved past him to the truck's back door, driving his point home with a forced laugh. "The whole thing's just hysterical." He came back with a pack of cigarettes. Tossing the keys at Mako and hitting him in the back, he plopped down beside him and lit one.

Mako ignored his temper tantrum and remained silent despite his partner's frequent leers in his direction.

"It was just a kiss! It didn't mean anything!" he blurted out halfway through his smoke. "She forgot about it already. Literally."

Mako face-palmed. "Goddammit."

"Stop judging me!"

"She's going to ruin everything!"

"No, she's not! Everything is still going according to plan."

"She's coming this way," he grumbled. "Why don't you shut up for once."

"Gladly! Not like I wanna talk to _you_!"

"I thought you wanted me to be better conversation."

He angrily thumped his cigarette aside and pouted. " _Now_ , who won't shut up?"

When Liz was close enough, she tossed the gauze to him. "Thanks."

Junkrat's eyes, level with her knees, skimmed over the job she had done on her legs. "No worries," he replied automatically in a deflated tone.

"So," she continued, going for her own cigarettes. "I'm one of you now, yeah?"

"Yeah," Roadhog answered with a bite, turning towards Junkrat.

Liz could almost see the glare on his face through the mask. She wasn't sure if it was because she was getting better at reading him the way Junkrat could or if he had intentionally made it as obvious as possible. "Are you two ever going to let me in on your agenda?"

"What's there to know?" Junkrat declared.

"All of it! Why are we in Mexico? Why are we trying to find Sombra? Is your 'treasure' even real or is it just some McGuffin device?"

"Who said it was a device?" he retorted, not catching her meaning.

"Is it… here?" she asked cautiously.

"I don't really approve of this line of questioning." It was the most serious she had ever seen him be.

"Fine, don't tell me, but tell me _something_. I've been pretty much in the dark this whole time, and if you have really accepted me as part of… whatever this is, I deserve to know."

Junkrat's eyes rolled up and to the side in thought. "Okay, what do you already know about Sombra?"

She shrugged. "She's in a gang. She deals in illicit activities," she said in callback to the last time she tried to get information out of them.

"Yeah, ha ha. Do you know what gang?"

"Not the Deadlock Gang," she said with absolute confidence.

He leaned forward and lowered his tone as if the very words would summon them. "Los Muertos."

"So she would most likely be here in Mexico," she concluded.

Junkrat leaned back once again. "Not likely, mate. She's been really 'busy' here lately, if you know what I mean."

Liz gave him a look of skepticism. "Then why are we here?"

"Los Muertos," he replied matter-of-factly.

"I don't follow."

He beckoned her closer with a finger. Dissatisfied with her hesitance, he grabbed hold of her shorts and yanked her down to the sand with him and Roadhog. "As a ' _fan_ ' of ours, I'm _sure_ you know about the Dorado heist."

"Naturally," she responded, forgetting that lie had already been exposed.

His eyes darted up at her briefly as a smirk formed on his face. "Came in through the museum, blasted through a wall adjacent to the vault. Got all the gold we could carry. We had it aaall worked out perfectly and were gone so fast, we never even saw any policia… or Los Muertos."

"So why are you back here if you already robbed the bank?"

"You're asking the wrong questions, mate. What you should be asking is why we're back knowing that we're on Los Muertos' bad side."

"Yeah, and the police."

"¡A la mierda con la policía!"

Liz blinked in disbelief at his use of a Spanish phrase.

"We got the gang's attention once with that robbery, and the idea is if they get wind that we're back, word will get to Sombra. And instead of us tracking her down, she comes to _us_!"

A layer of concern joined the one of shock she was already wearing. "But that's not… What if they just kill us first?"

Junkrat smiled. "They won't"

"Okay, for the sake of argument, let's say they aren't going to kill us. How do you plan on getting their attention?"

"Who's to say we haven't already? We haven't really been on our best behavior since we got here."

"So, what then, are we just going to sit on this beach until Sombra shows up?"

"Nah, that won't work. If we stay too quiet, they may think we have already left, and it won't be worth Sombra's time to come back from… wherever. We have to stir up some more shit." He began rifling through his pockets. "…Even bigger shit."

She shook her head. "Why didn't you stick around after the heist last time you were here and wait for her then?"

"The agenda was different back then," he replied distractedly. "Had something else cooking." He stopped digging around and pulled out a folded up napkin, handing it over.

Having not unfolded it yet, she immediately recognized the napkin from her diner. "This… Was this your plan before you picked me up?"

"Mmm, sorta," Junkrat squeaked as Roadhog rocked a palm back and forth in agreeance. "We hadn't quite finished working out the details at the time. It doesn't matter now. Are you in or not?"

"Fuck, in for a penny, in for a pound." She unfolded the plans and began looking over the surprisingly legible scribbles from a man of his madness. "Let's do this."

* * *

_"Tonight's breaking news, the junkers have been spotted in Mexico again…"_

_"Esta noche, en las noticias a las 11, parece que 'los junkers' han regresado. El metraje de la cámara de seguridad mostró que una mujer estaba con ellos…"_

_"…This time, with a female accomplice known as 'The Cook'…"_

_"…La Cocinera…"_

_"News reports from Mexico say they were out to do much more damage this time, reducing an entire LumériCo plant to nothing but rubble..."_

_"... una tarea difícil de lograr ..."_

_"…leaving large amounts of the city of Dorado without power. At this time, we can't say for certain what their motives were…"_

_"…Con razones desconocidas. Los testigos recuerdan su testimonio del evento, diciendo que había una ..."_

_"…A 'big bada-boom'…"_

…

"I still don't get you, Cookie." Junkrat casually rambled on as they continued to rig the base of the LumériCo plant with explosives in almost total darkness. "At first, I thought you were just sucking up to us at the diner to save your own ass. Totally understandable, I can respect that. We gave you plenty of opportunities after that to leave, though, and you didn't take 'em."

Liz grabbed another spool of wire from Junkrat's bag and flitted back to work. She found the whole situation nerve-wracking enough without his out-loud speculating and just wanted to get done as fast as possible.

"And then when you rode off on our chopper back in the States, I thought for sure we'd never see you again. But you came back and saved us."

"Ok, maybe I was trying to save my own ass at first." The distraction of decorating the building's basement with bombs like it was Christmas garland was making more truth come out of her than she intended. "And maybe this whole job right now is giving me more anxiety than I have ever experienced in my entire life."

Junkrat laughed. "Is it?"

She breathed easy, noticing her uncalculated prattles derailed his original line of questioning. "I know it's the middle of the night, so there shouldn't be anyone inside this building, but..."

"But what?"

"I only have a feeble grasp on how much damage this is going to do, and I still feel like this is overkill, like we're going to wipe out half the town and the people in it."

"Eh heh heh, that's precious! You do know you don't actually care about that, right?"

"Uh, yeah. I do."

"No, you don't, mate."

"I'm telling you, I do. Someone's going to get hurt."

"I hear what you're saying but… Ok, you know how dogs don't really know words?"

"What?!" She glared at him. "Are you calling me a dog?"

"No, no, not at all!" He back-pedaled. "Just, try to keep up. Dogs don't know words. They can learn a few commands and stuff, but most of the time, they aren't listening to the actual words. They're listening to the tone."

"Uh huh."

His words stalled as he tried to carefully collect his thoughts, but his hands never quit working at the explosives. "Okay. So. You can call a dog an ugly, stupid piece of shit, and tell him you're gonna slit his throat, but if you say it all sweet and happy, he'll waaag and smiiile and wiggle. Conversely, you can tell him you love him, but if you yell it? He'll either tuck tail or attack, depending on the dog." He snickered to himself in recollection of some unshared memory. "Trust me, I know from experience."

"Which one of us is the dog in this analogy?"

"Hmm…. Me? I guess?"

"What's your point?"

"I've heard everything you've been saying about casualties and collateral damage and all that junk –"

"'All that junk.' Yeah, you've really been listening."

"I have! But what I'm telling ya is I know you don't mean it because of your tone. I hear what you're _really_ saying and reading your body language, and I can tell you don't believe any of that stuff yourself."

Wanting a cigarette she couldn't have at the moment, she unwittingly scratched at her metal arm. "So you're calling me a liar?"

"Takes one to know one, mate."

"Oh, fuck you!"

"Yeah, yeah, fuck me, but I just showed you you're not fooling me. The thing is I don't really think it's me you want to convince."

Her hands waved sarcastically. "Ooh, look at you! You figured me out, and the twist is I'm lying to myself! Good one, Freud."

"Actually, that's not what I'm saying either. I think you're just trying to be someone you're not."

"And why would I do that?"

"I dunno," he replied automatically, much more focused on his work than this conversation. "Probably for that Jesse bloke."

Liz dropped what she was doing. "Fuck you."

"Fuck me, again? I must really be hitting a nerve, hahahaha."

Bitter, she resumed her job. "Oh, well, you're a kindred liar, too, so let me see if I can figure out who you're trying to impress with your body count. Hmm…"

"It's not that I enjoy killing a bunch of people. I'm either in it for the fireworks or the money. I'm not that hard to figure out, Cookie." He momentarily glanced up to watch her deftly snip away at the extra length of wires, despite her dominant hand being freshly replaced. Flipping her knife shut, she tossed it in her palm a coupled times just for flair, and he smirked. "See there? I like you much better when you're just being yourself."

"How's that?"

"Don't take this the wrong way, Cookie, but that's gotta be the sexiest use of a knife I've ever seen."

"Of course _you_ would think that." His comment made her forget why she was angry. "And here I thought you were gonna tease me about its size."

"It _is_ bloody small."

She came over to where he was and leaned over him as his fingers worked furiously at the detonator.

"You still got it handy?"

"Yeah?"

He pulled a wire taut. "Give this a slice for me, eh?"

She cut where he indicated and spun her knife around idly. "What would you do without me?"

"Perish," he joked as he secured the severed end. After a couple moments, he could feel her focus lift from the detonator to his face. Instinctively, he returned her gaze. They stared at each other in uncomfortable silence for a moment before he squeaked, "What?"

With no preamble, she closed in and gave him a quick peck on the lips, leaving him confused.

"What was that for?!"

Grinning, she stood. "Friendly kiss. No tongue."

Junkrat shook it off and finished setting up the blasting cap. "C'mon, let's go."

Emerging into an alleyway through the tiny basement window, Roadhog was already there waiting for them in the freshly retuned food truck idling quiet as a whisper. He had spent the past few days modifying the engine while Liz and Junkrat were getting materials together for the plan, and Junkrat had even finished it off with a new paint job - a toothy yellow smiley face with X's for eyes.

"How many?" Roadhog asked him.

"Seven."

Liz looked to Junkrat as the truck pulled off. "Seven what?"

"City blocks."

Her eyes widened as she caught on. "Is the blast really going to reach that far?"

"Nah, I added a few blocks for good measure."

Exactly seven city blocks away atop a hill with a good vantage point of the city, Roadhog turned the truck around and put it in park. Junkrat was already giggling before he even had the detonator in hand. "Ready?"

Roadhog nodded, and Liz pushed the shades from her head down over her eyes. "Guess so."

His fingers twitched with excitement, hovering over the blinking red button. "3…2…" More giggles. "…1…"

Liz's body tensed in anticipation as his thumb pushed down on the button, but nothing happened.

With an eyebrow cocked, Junkrat examined the detonator. He shook it a couple times. "1…" He pushed it in again. Still nothing. "Where's the kaboom?!" He repeatedly punched the button in. "There's supposed to be an earth-shattering kaboom!"

Liz slowly pulled her shades off. "What happened?"

"Hog, take us back!" Junkrat demanded.

This time, the truck took off at break-neck speed.

As they neared the plant, Junkrat opened the passenger door and the wind whipped his golden hair wildly around his face. He grabbed onto the door frame and held up four fingers on his other hand.

Roadhog grunted. "Four?"

Junkrat's brow lowered. "Four," he echoed in a menacing tone just before he hopped out of the still-moving vehicle.

Liz shot Roadhog a look of concern. "We're not going to wait for him?"

"No, he said four." With that, he pushed the pedal to the floor.

Jamison scrambled back to the same narrow window they had used before and shimmied down into the basement, all the while cursing under his breath. He was positive Cookie had made a mistake, because when it came to kabooms, he doesn't come a gutser. No, not Jamison Fawkes.

His fingers slid down every wire they had draped along the walls of that room, the slick plastic coating gently gliding across the skin of his thumb and forefinger. It was sensual to him like tracing the figure of a lover, and all went smooth as silk, much to his surprise. He examined some of the connections more closely, but still found nothing wrong. At last, he returned to the most important part – the blasting cap. Finding it poorly attached to the remote detonation device, a gasp escaped his lips. "It wasn't Cookie."

As he went to work properly securing it, he thought back to the moment he placed it, the distractions he faced. He could have already cracked a fat watching Cookie getting flustered with him and bending over all those bombs, but then she came at him with that unwarranted peck. What was she trying to pull?

Filled with determination, he was going to make damn sure this thing would blow this time. "This goes in here, that goes in there…"

Still elbow deep in the on the fly modifications, the door swung open, and he found himself at the business end of two pistols wielded by security guards. "¡No te muevas!"

He put his hands up with a knowing grin.

"¿Dónde está la chica de la cámara de seguridad?"

"Don't shoot, amigo." With his hands still level with his head, he wiggled a finger down at the tangle of wires in his lap. "Explosivo."

The guards froze in fear. One of them hesitantly reached for the radio at his belt, mumbling a lot of Spanish words into it that Jamison didn't know.

He slowly rose to his feet and began backing towards the window.

"¡No te muevas! ¡No te muevas o dispararé!"

"You should really leave." He made the walking away gesture with two fingers as legs. "Vamanos or whatever. Grande bomba. Big badda boom."

The terror grew in one of the guard's eyes, and he suddenly dropped his gun, taking off up the stairs like a lightning bolt. His partner watched him disappear from over his shoulder, never taking his gun off Jamison. When he turned back, realization lit up on his face. "Eres ese junker que explotó en el banco."

Jamison's grin widened as he motioned with both hands to the door. In an intimidating whisper, he hissed, "Go."

The other guard holstered his pistol, raising his fists. "¡No!"

Jamison burst into laughter. "Really?! Alright, ya cunt, let's do this!" He stood perfectly still as the guard came at him. At the very last second, he slid his peg leg in front of him, tripping his assailant. He hit the ground with a groan, immediately reaching for the junker's peg, but Jamison delicately hopped out of his reach, getting closer to the window. As the guard pushed himself to his feet, Jamison sucker punched him in the face one good time with all he had. Stomping one foot on the guard's groin he gave himself a boost up to the window. The guard weakly grabbed for the his legs, but missed.

Once outside, Jamison took off running down the alleyway. Behind him came the flopping echoes of footsteps as the stubborn guard continued to pursue him. "Persistent!" he shouted to his stalker. "I love it!"

"¡Boca de pedo!"

Coming to a dead end, Jamison skid to a clumsy stop and turned to face the guard. The guard slowed to a halt several feet away. With a satisfied chuckle, he pointed the gun at him once again as he whipped out some cuffs.

"Not today," Junkrat said, raising the remote detonator. "You'll always remember this as the day you _almost_ caught Jamison 'Junkrat' Fawkes!"

"¿Qué?"

"Dammit," he griped to himself. "Can't believe I wasted that zinger on this guy."

While he was still lamenting the loss of his joke, the guard suddenly fired a "warning" shot at him, grazing his shoulder.

Jamison jerked back from the blast and grabbed his wound, doubling over in pain. "Ah, fuck me _dead_!"

The guard laughed heartily. "Te dije que no te movieras…"

He growled, positioning his finger over the trigger. "You think that's funny? Get a load ah _this!_ " He pushed in the button and the entire sky momentarily lit up like it was day as the LumériCo building quaked and crumbled in on itself so massively, it looked like slow motion. All of the streetlights and light pouring out from inside homes and residences went black in a wave of darkness spreading outward from the plant until the only visible illumination came from the explosion's flames towering up into the heavens in a grand, surrealistic display, and Jamison gleefully got to watch the whole thing from above as the blast sent him flying backwards across the city.

_Only fools don't look back at their own explosion._


	10. Dramamine

_This is gonna hurt…_

Jamison had reached the peak of his ascension and was picking up speed once again as he came down. He held his breath at the last second like he was going in for a water dive, but unfortunately for him, that wasn't the case. He hit the ground ass-first, falling out flat as he skid into a brick wall, and just laid there for a long moment with his body throbbing in pain. After what felt like an eternity, he began to pick himself up.

"I need… healing…" he grumbled, trying to forget about the agony of his shoulder by focusing on the road rash. Noticing his mech arm on the ground, he picked it up and limped blindly down the dark street, favoring his peg leg. He hadn't traveled far when a truck came barreling around the corner past him. He turned to face it and watched as it did half a donut and screeched to a stop in front of him. With his peg hanging on by a thread, he shakily stood in the brightness flooding him from the truck's headlights.

"Jamie!" Liz jumped out of the passenger door and rushed to his side just as he collapsed. She tried to lift him, but couldn't. "Help me!" she cried pitifully to Roadhog.

The massive bodyguard jogged over to him, lifting her out of the way with one hand like she weighed nothing, and pushed a yellow can up to Junkrat's face. She heard a strong hiss as whatever was in said can was dispensed, and Junkrat began to cough. Roadhog took him and all his pieces in his arms, carrying him back to the truck. "You drive," he commanded Liz.

She jumped behind the wheel and watched helplessly as he lifted Junkrat's limp body into the back of the truck. She would have been certain he wasn't alive if she hadn't heard his coughing and wheezing with her own ears. "Is he going to be alright?"

"Yes. Drive."

"Where?"

"Just drive!"

She stomped on it and took off aimlessly into the pitch black streets. A couple miles down the road, she slammed on the brakes so hard, everyone in the vehicle was jarred forward. She heard a faint groan from Junkrat that was quickly drowned out by Roadhog's berating her. "What the hell are you doing?!"

She was stunned into silence, and Roadhog, not patient enough to wait for her to find the words, poked his head into the cab. He intended to scold her further, but once he saw the road for himself, he stopped. Droves of people were blocking the path, rioting and looting amidst the blackout. Liz imagined that under his mask, his jaw had dropped like hers.

It hadn't though. "Turn around," he directed her. "Back to the country."

She inched the truck forward, but the unrested citizens directly in front of her began banging on the front of the truck. The banging quickly turned to pushing, and she feared it wouldn't take many more volunteers to topple them over. "I-I…"

Roadhog slapped the gearshift in reverse and pushed down on her knee until the truck began to speed away backwards. Not traveling perfectly straight, the edge of a building growing closer in the rearview mirror barely caught Liz's attention. She jerked the wheel to one side and hit the brakes, putting the truck in a spin. Roadhog reached for the gear shift again and righted it. "Drive," he commanded her once more, returning to Junkrat's side.

The transition to country roads went almost completely unnoticed by her since the city was already so dark. Amidst the commotion, she had lost her sense of direction as well, and instead of taking them back to the coast, she was taking them further inland. She eventually realized it when the old familiar signs of the desert started to appear.

_This is fine._

The bike was just going to have to be okay on its own back at their beach shack a while longer. "I'm going off road now," she warned Roadhog as she took an unpaved path further out into the desert.

"Keep an eye on the gas tank," he warned.

She took a hand off of the wheel to light a much needed cigarette. "How's he doing back there?"

"He's fine. Just resting." Roadhog came to the front and took a seat in the cab with her without any further explanation.

"You really don't say much."

"I don't like talkers."

"I was just making an observation."

After a length of silence that Liz thought indicated the conversation was over, he spoke again without any prompt. "That's what's wrong with you two. You think every stupid little silence needs to be filled."

"Not _every_ silence."

"What do you think's gonna happen if you left one of your thoughts unspoken, hmm?"

"I see what you're saying. It wouldn't be the end of the world or anything."

"No, it wouldn't," he quickly agreed.

Silence again.

Liz started to speak once more without even realizing it. "How long –"

Roadhog sighed. "There you go again."

She scowled and continued. "How long is he going to rest?"

"Til he wakes up."

"Do you have him sedated?"

"Yes."

"Well, how long does that take?"

"I don't have him as doped up as I had you. His injuries aren't as bad."

"How long was I out?"

"A few days."

She was starting to get frustrated with his short answers and just wanted to stop driving. She pushed her cigarette into the cab's ashtray. "Is this far enough out?"

He glanced around at the horizon. "I would think so."

She slowed the truck to a stop. Once in park, she made a beeline to the back to check on Junkrat. Kneeling beside him, anxiety crept over her as she took in the sight of his bruises, scrapes, and the blood-soaked bandage on his shoulder. His eyes were closed tight in a restless expression, but when she ran a hand through his hair, his body relaxed some.

She sighed and cradled his face in her palm, her troubled eyes traveling over him. Both of his prosthetics were still removed. Having never seen him without them before, her fingers instinctively caressed his arm as though it were a fresh injury. A little bloody, there were severed and exposed wires sticking out from the stub, and she wondered if her arm looked the same under its mechanical replacement.

She searched for his prosthetics, feeling the need to make sure they were nearby. Once she found them, her focus zeroed in on the wooden peg. She wasn't surprised to see that it merely screwed on, but what piqued her curiosity was how deep the threaded hole was. Much deeper than it needed to be…

_That's it! That's where he keeps the drive with the God AI! It's so simple, why didn't I think of it before…_

A hand suddenly fell to her shoulder from behind, startling her. She looked up to find Roadhog standing over her.

"I told you, he'll be fine." He reached for her hand.

"I was just –"

His other hand slid his mask up, resting it atop his head. It was the first time she had seen his face completely unobstructed, and he wasn't the monster she had imagined. Pink skin, light scars here and there, cute up-turned nose, soft lips. What she found most surprising was his eyes, tired and sincere with an unexpected kindness underneath.

"Come sit with me for a while," he said in a gentle tone.

Mesmerized, she willingly followed. With her hand in his, he led them out the back of the truck, and they took a seat near a rock. Inherently feeling like she wasn't supposed to look at him, her eyes trailed over the desert that stretched underneath the glittering stars. "We should probably build a fire," she mused, crossing her legs.

"No, they only attract attention." He let his hand slide away from hers. "He did that, too."

"Did what? Build fires?"

"He stayed by your side when you were under."

"He did?"

"He won't admit it, but he likes you. Too much if you ask me."

"We're just friends," she assured him.

"If I had it my way, I'd keep it like that, but I realize I have no say in the matter."

She could feel him looking her way, and her curiosity got the best of her, turning to meet his stare.

"Let me tell you about Jamison Fawkes," he said, commanding eye contact. "He's a tough bugger, even tougher than he looks. These injuries right now are a scrape on the knee compared to what he's put himself through. He's selfish. Can be downright abusive in the wrong light. And he's every bit as unstable as you think. He loves watching the world burn, even more so if he set the fire. But deep down, he's a little kid. A broken little boy that needs someone to take care of him."

"That's you," she interrupted.

"Yeah."

"You're not just his bodyguard."

"I'm whatever he needs me to be."

"You really care about him…"

"I can tell you do, too, but I'm not entirely convinced you can handle him." He paused for dramatic effect. "I know you two kissed."

"It was just a peck. And _he_ kissed _me_ ," she corrected him, intentionally omitting the one she had given him in the basement.

"I know him, and I don't trust you, so I'm convinced this can only end badly. I want nothing more but for him to be happy, and if you make him happy, so be it. But if that's not your intention, then consider this your warning."

The kindness in his eyes melted away into frightening austerity, piercing her to the core. "If you ever hurt him… I'll. Hurt. You."

"I- I won't," she croaked, quivering in his glare.

After an exceptionally long pause, he replaced his mask and turned back to the desertscape.

The natural silence between them returned, and seeing how chilling Roadhog could be when he spoke, Liz welcomed it. Collecting her thoughts, she couldn't help but wonder how much of the past day's activities had been seen by Jesse. If he had sabotaged the bomb connection after they first left the basement. If they were somehow being watched right then…

Roadhog stood up, and she turned to him. "You sleeping in the cab again?"

He stalled for a moment. "If you're asking my permission to stay with him, you don't need it." He went for the cab's door. "It's probably what he'd want, anyway."

After a few more minutes alone, she returned to the back of the truck and reclined beside the junker, stroking his patchy, charred hair. He began to purr like a kitten, and a smile crept across her face.

She mulled over Roadhog's words and began to reevaluate all of the recent contact between her and Junkrat. She had convinced herself that she had kissed him earlier to try and make him feel less awkward about the one from before, but in this new light, that was starting to look like a shallow excuse. But even so, she was just trying to earn his affection to make her double agent status easier. She didn't find him attractive, right? She couldn't have any _serious_ feelings for the guy, making Roadhog's words seem all the more ominous.

She tore her gaze away from him to examine his detached leg again lying within arm's reach. It was right there. She could grab the treasure right then and be done with it. She looked to the cab to confirm that Roadhog wasn't watching. He was adjusting the seat, still trying to get comfortable.

Her eyes darted back to Junkrat when he let out a little whimper. She reached for him, and the pathetic little sounds disappeared with her touch. Obligated to continue petting him, she drew her body closer, planting a chaste kiss on his forehead.

_I'll just lay here a bit longer. To make sure Roadhog is asleep…_

But she couldn't outlast him. With her eyes falling closed, she didn't notice Roadhog repositioning the rearview mirror to see them better. Even if her eyes were open, though, she wouldn't have seen the worry behind his mask.


	11. When I'm Small

"Liz… wake up."

Her reaction was a bit delayed, as her brain still wasn't quite functional. A brief glance around explained that for her – it was still pitch black out. Roadhog was looming above, nudging her with his foot. She pushed the toe of his boot away. "What's going on?"

"We're resuming the original plan. Rat should be waking up soon. If there's anything you need to take care of, now's the time."

"Take care of?" The God AI came to mind. "Like what?"

"I'm about to take a slash, and we're leaving after that. Thought you might wanna do the same."

"Oh. Okay." She dragged out her wake-up stretches to kill time until he was out the door. As soon as it shut behind him, she reached for the peg, holding it up-side down until its contents slid out into her hand – the tiny usb drive. Delicately holding it between her fingertips, she brought it right to her face to examine it closely. Nothing special about it. Not that she could tell…. But she was holding it with her own hands, seeing it with her own eyes – proof that it existed. Sorta.

_There's no telling what's really on this thing._

Suddenly Junkrat stirred. "Just how I drew it up!"

Jarred, she franticly shoved it back into its home and tossed the peg roughly where she'd found it. "What's that?"

"Boba tea…"

She moved closer and examined him. "Are you awake?"

"Half milk, half sweet."

"I'll take that as a no..."

"And dumplings for Mako."

Smirking, she decided to test the waters. "So, Jamie… What's the name of the God AI?"

"It's not a _God_ AI!"

A jolt of apprehension struck her. "It's not?"

"She's a goddess, you dingy drongo…"

"Oh, really? What does she do?"

"Whatever I want." He rolled onto his side toward her, eyes still closed and donning a silly grin.

"Does she have a name?"

"…I call her Cookie…"

"The Goddess?"

"No, the Sheila… She's…"

She leaned closer. "She's what?"

"Just..." He nuzzled his cheek deeper into his folded hands. "Wonderful."

Liz hadn't noticed Roadhog had returned until he spoke. "Also, he's a sleep talker. Never shuts up. Ever." He pointed a meaty thumb behind him. "You ready to go?"

"Yeah." She nudged Junkrat. "Oh, Ja-a-amison."

His eyes rolled open and his smile curled wider. "Well, g'day."

"Time to set the world on fire," she sing-songed.

He sighed with contentment whilst casually finger-banging his nostril. "An angel... Am I dead?"

Roadhog scoffed. "No, just high on pain killers." He tossed the keys to Liz. "You should drive. I have to help him reattach his arm."

She picked the appendage up and looked at it. "Actually, why don't I help him with that."

"I've done this before. It'll be easier if I do."

"Yeah, but," she waved her mech hand at him, "I should probably learn how. Just in case."

He sighed, snatching the keys back from her. "Fine."

Liz looked at his arm, turning it over in her hands. While she was pondering how this was going to work, Junkrat sat up and scooted to her. He looked absolutely gone with his hair a bigger mess than usual, his eyes barely open a slit, and beads of spit at the corners of his mouth. He absent-mindedly wiped them away but still continued to drool. "The, uh, thing."

She held out his prosthetic to him. "This?"

"Yeah. I mean, no." He took it, and pointed to an empty milk crate on the floor. "That."

She dragged it near him and he placed the arm on it, waving her closer with his fingers.

She couldn't get any closer without being on him. "What do you want me to do exactly?"

He leaned his arm stub on the crate and grabbed hold of her leg, putting it around his back and placing his own leg stub around her other side in a weird straddle. "Hold it here," he instructed her, nodding to his mech as he dug a wire stripper out of his bag and set it on the crate.

He suddenly reached for her hand. Inadvertently seeing him differently after her talk with Roadhog the night before, her stomach did a quick flip at his touch. "What are you –?"

He moved her fingers to the short wires jutting from his arm. "You have to be my other hand, Cookie. Hold this wire out for me."

She watched intently as he trimmed some of the coating off the ends. "That doesn't seem too difficult."

"Yeah, but on your own it's a bastard. Too many more accidents like this, and I'll have to go under the knife again."

"Why's that?"

He mended the severed ends together with some difficulty. "Running out of slack." He pinched the ends in place with his black fingernails and held them. "Get the tape out of my bag, will ya, mate?"

Her eyes trailed down to the messenger bag hanging at his waist and her stomach did another flip. She hadn't realized she had hesitated.

"Problem?"

"N-no." She hovered her hand over his thigh, carefully reaching inside, but she couldn't quit thinking about how the bag happened to be resting between his legs at the moment. _What's wrong with you, Liz?_

Slowly understanding the situation, Junkrat began to smile. "You look a little distracted," he teased.

Digging deeper, she could tell her fingertips had grazed the area she had been trying to avoid. "Sorry!" she gasped, quickly producing the roll of tape.

He chuckled. "That's pretty low, Cookie. Taking advantage of me like that…"

"It was an accident."

He smirked. "All you hafta do is ask."

She averted her eyes as her face blushed pink. "Can we just get back to the task at hand?"

"Suuure, if you can control yourself long enough."

Liz's cheeks were growing hotter as he went back to work, and she found herself still thinking about what he had said instead of watching what he was doing. "So… All I'd have to do is ask, huh?"

"Did I say that out loud?" He giggled. "Guess I'm still a bit off me head." His eyes wandered off the crate to her thigh resting on his. He didn't realize his gaze had moved up to her cleavage until one of his mech fingers started twitching on its own.

"Uh, Junkrat… Is it supposed to do that?"

He eyeballed the spasming digit. "…No." With a frustrated sigh, he ripped apart the last connection he'd made and went back to repairing it, thinking back to how he'd messed up the blasting cap. "It would help if you…" he trailed off.

"If I what?"

"Talk about something else. Anything else." He exhaled through pursed lips. "So I can focus."

"Right." His request reminded her how little time she had until he replaced his leg, putting that thumb drive out of her reach indefinitely. She didn't see any chance of getting to it again before that happened, but there was something freeing about that thought, like it was out of her hands. "You wanna tell me some more about the goddess?" she asked flippantly.

His face contorted with dramatic shock as the wire strippers fell through his fingers, hitting the ground with a thud. "What?!"

"You didn't know you talk in your sleep?"

"Fuck me dead and bury me pregnant…"

Her brow cocked in amusement. "That's a new one."

His eyes were drawn to the treasure's hiding place, but he consciously forced them back to Liz. "What did I say?"

"The treasure's a God AI, ain't it?"

"Hooley dooley." He scowled deeply, turning back to taping the wires in his arm. "I really am a fuckwit."

She ripped the tape strip for him. "No, you're not. It's not like that really means anything to me. But I'm guessing it does to Sombra."

"That'd be right." He pushed his arm into the prosthetic's socket with a grunt. "Go ask Hog for some more of that bone-healing juice or whatever." Wincing, he twisted some adjusters at the top of the arm, still holding it in place as a few dribbles of blood seeped out of the connection. "I think we're done here," he said in a strained tone.

By the time she had returned with one of those yellow canisters, he already had his leg screwed back on. She passed the can to him. "He says we're almost there."

"Good." He dispensed the canister's contents and tossed it aside, sighing happily as he rotated his bandaged shoulder. "Let's get this party started."

* * *

"What a beautiful day!" Junkrat exclaimed as he jumped out of the truck with a stretch. Liz looked around, observing it was still a while until sunrise. The streets, in shambles from all the rioting, were still without power and virtually empty. The only sound she could hear was the distant wailing of some car alarm. She just shrugged and followed.

Roadhog stepped down out of the cab, already in a standing position due to his immense height. He opened a sack and tossed a few cans of spray paint to Liz and Junkrat.

She began shaking her can as she approached some graffiti on a nearby wall. It was a purple angular skull with the words "Los Muertos" scrawled under it in lime green. She kept staring at it emptily, eventually stilling the can and looking to Junkrat. "You go first," she insisted.

He laughed. "What's your hang up?" He walked up beside her and began spraying yellow over the tag in a big wide circle. With a second can of black, he turned the circle into the signature smiley face from the truck and all of his weapons. "It's not hard."

She looked over to Roadhog who had simply sprayed an "X" over another Los Muertos tag in red.

Junkrat motioned to his partner's work. "See? It can be anything, really." He gave her a light shove as he moved past her to the next tag. "Time is a factor, though, so get moving."

She moved onto another spray that was someone's name written in that artistic, hard-to-read graffiti style, and Liz couldn't decipher what it said. "How do we know if it's a Los Muertos tag?"

Junkrat threw his arms out wide. "They're _all_ Los Muertos tags, Cookie! This is their turf!"

She examined it again, pursing her mouth in thought. After a moment, she held the can up to the brick and pushed down on the dispenser's top, sending out a smooth stream of black. With some work, she fashioned her strokes into something resembling a bomb with streaks dripping down from it.

She took a step back to admire her art, and Junkrat came over, joining her. He reached up with the yellow can and made little marks coming out around the top of the fuse so it looked lit and then stepped back next to Liz.

Slowly, they both cocked their heads to the side, and he gave her a hard pat on the back. "Perfect! Keep it up!" He scrambled to the gang's next sign. "Those little drips won't happen if you use less paint," he advised, already making another smiley tag.

After they had covered all of the marks in the area with their own, they hopped back in the truck and cruised around looking for more. Finding all the Los Muertos sprays in town took them into some sketchy spots, but they never stuck around long enough for anyone to see them, and after the first few stops, Liz found it was getting easier. She got a taste for it. The clinking sound of all those cans being shook, the fumes, the dribbles of paint on her fingertips, the discourse they were starting... It was fun.

She didn't think of the God AI at all. Or McCree.

The sun had finally made it all the way above the horizon, and they were beginning to see more people everywhere they went. They were still rolling around the city, starting to lap areas they had already been when a familiar bass line came on the radio.

_"Bum bum bum bum ba-dum-dum_

_Bum bum bum bum ba-dum-dum"_

Junkrat flashed a wide open-mouth smile, turning it up. "It's time for everyone's favorite music game, Under Pressure or Ice Ice Baby!"

Liz folded her arms. "That's obviously Under Pressure."

"Are you suuure?"

"Yes! Everyone knows Vanilla Ice added that extra 'ba-bum' in the middle of it."

"Hog?"

He grunted. "It's Queen."

At that moment, the guitar joined the bass. "Ok, fine, good job, everyone knows their twentieth century classical music. It's Queen…aaand David Bowie! Who wants what part?"

Roadhog growled. "I don't sing."

"Cookie? C'mon, I've heard you singing in the shower. You have no excuse!"

"Fine, but I get to be Bowie."

"Perfect!" He began to hum along with Freddie Mercury's scatting. " _Mm ba ba bay. Bu bu bum bay bay…_ "

Liz joined in meekly. " _Pressure pushing down on me_

_Pressing down on you no man has hold_

_Under pressure –_

_"That brings a building down,"_ Junkrat jumped in. " _Splits a family in two!"_

_"Puts people on streets."_

_"Um ba ba be_

_Um ba ba be_

_De day da_

_Ee day da - that's okay! Hahahaaa!"_

Liz couldn't help but smile at his enthusiasm. " _It's the terror of knowing_

_What this world is about_

_Watching some good friends screaming_ …"

" _Let me out!_ " He rang out with that natural falsetto he had when he got excited. " _Tomorrow makes me higher higher hi-i-i-i…._ "

By then, Liz was really into their duet. " _Pressure on people, people on streets_."

"…. _.i-i-i-igh_!"

He threw an arm over her shoulder as they both sang the line in harmony. " _Turned away from it all like a blind man. Sat on a fence but it don't work_."

" _Keep coming up with love but it's so slashed and torn._ "

He threw his other arm out, lifting it higher as the note rose. " _Why-y-y-y? Whyyyyyyyyy….!"_

They began to sway together in time and Roadhog just shook his head, but his fingers betrayed him, drumming the steering wheel.

" _Love love love love love…_."

" _Insanity laughs, under pressure we're breaking_!"

Junkrat was practically vibrating with energy as he broke it down. " _Can't we give ourselves one more chance? Why can't we give love, give love, give love, give love…_ "

By the time he had repeated the phrase "give love" more times than necessary, Roadhog had joined in for the ending, all three of them singing and swaying:

"' _Cause love's such an old fashioned word_

_And love dares you to care for_

_The people on the edge of the night_

_And love dares you to change our way of_

_Caring about ourselves_

_This is our last dance_

_This is ourselves."_

Liz was absolutely enchanted by then, grinning stupidly at Junkrat as he carried it home. " _Under pressure. Under pressure… Pressure."_ With the last few snaps of the song fading out, he noticed Liz staring at him. "What?"

"Nothing, just…" Liz pointed past him out the passenger window down an alleyway. "There! There's some more graffiti down that way!"

"Eh," Junkrat crowed. "I think we've done enough." He squinted at where she was pointing. "It's just a little thing anyway. Hardly worth our time."

"C'mon. One more could only help."

He chortled. "Alright, Cookie! If it means that much to ya."

Roadhog eased them down the alley, stopping as close as possible to the graffiti. "I'm staying here," he declared, keeping the engine running.

"Suit yourself." Liz took the yellow can and hopped down into the street in movements akin to dancing. Junkrat was a footstep behind, laughing at her merriment and writing his name over a pink sugar skull.

Putting in the extra effort for her last one, Liz took her time and made strokes with careful finesse.

Junkrat, finishing before her, came over to watch. He began to hoot with laughter. "Look at you! That's bloody brilliant!"

She put some final touches on it and stepped back. "You like it?"

It was a silhouette of Junkrat's crazy, flaming hair with his maniacal smile underneath. "I love it!" With a grin, he returned to where he had just done "Junkrat" and added a plus sign and "Cookie" underneath. "That's better!"

She giggled, and of course he joined in. When their laughter died down, she asked thoughtfully, "What about Roadhog?"

He mindlessly moved closer to her with a lingering smile. "If he wanted to be a part of this, he would have came with."

Still locked in a gaze together, neither one had noticed the conversation had dropped off until they heard shouting further down the alley. "¡Pendejos!"

They both snapped their attention that way and saw three men in neon skull makeup with guns running towards them. One popped off a shot, and Liz felt her hair breeze back as it whizzed past her head. "Shit!" she exclaimed, dropping her can.

Junkrat grabbed her by the wrist and dragged her to the truck, signaling for Roadhog to gas on it. With the truck already in motion, Liz almost lost her footing coming in, but Junkrat hung onto her, pulling her in and reaching around her to slam the door shut.

She lunged for the lock, instinctively hitting it as though their on-foot pursuers could somehow catch up with them. It wasn't until that moment that she realized that she was sitting in Junkrat's lap, his arms still around her waist.

Now acutely aware of her position, she also noted he wasn't showing any signs of intending to let her go. She was just staring straight forward, conflicted on whether or not she should move, when they hit a bump in the road. His grip around her tightened, and she felt her pulse rise with that queasy, floaty feeling again. _Why him?_ _Why am I catching feelings for him?_ She stiffened.

A light chuckle rumbled from Junkrat, slightly jarring his body underneath hers. "You alright there, Cookie?"

_And I think he knows._

"…Yeah. I'm just tired."

In a moment of _fuck it_ , she let her hands slide over his to see what he would do. Without hesitation, he slipped some of his fingers between hers, and her belly grew warm. It didn't feel wrong or awkward. It felt like home.

He briefly squeezed his grip on her fingers. "You two didn't get much sleep last night, didya?"

"Not really."

Roadhog mumbled, "I'm fine."

Junkrat withdrew his grasp from hers, consciously letting his hands loiter over her waist as much as possible. "We got a ways to go. No one would blame ya if you went in the back and took a nap."

She took that as her cue to get up. "Okay." Placing her palms on his thighs, she eased herself off of him and took her leave, laying down where he had been before and closing her eyes. She really was tired, but after that, she had a lot on her mind, and going right to sleep was no easy task.


	12. Washed Out

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A thousand apologies to everyone that was reading my fic when I disappeared for almost 4 months. It may have taken a while, but I vowed to myself never to leave a fic unfinished bc we all know how much everyone dislikes that. So here we are. It's actually very close to the end, and I will have it all up very soon. Really. Don't give up on me, yet...

_"Lizard! Order in!"_

_That familiar old screech never stopped annoying her, same as the smell of hot grease and old coffee, but there was a comforting undertone to it this time that Liz couldn't explain._

_She reached for the ticket and hung it on the holder over the line. Burgers. Always burgers. She pulled a couple pre-formed patties out of the floor cooler and carelessly tossed them onto the flattop. As she watched the raw meat sputter its juices every which way, she felt a nondescript itch. It was everywhere and nowhere all at once._

_Anxiety._

_"God, I'm sick of this shit," she muttered, passively scratching her elbow. She yearned for something more, but she didn't even know what it was. A vacation? A thing? A person?_

_That's what it was. She missed someone._

_She flipped one of the patties over as she wondered who. Dad? Jesse?_

_That didn't quite feel right._

_"The person or the burgers?" She held the spatula out over the pink side of the unflipped burger. She could see her hand there, but it felt like it was still at her side, pins and needles. She shook the hand, but the sensation wouldn't fade. Another shake and she dropped the spatula. "What the fuck?"_

_She looked over at her side where she felt like her hand was, just to be sure it wasn't there, then looked back at where she was actually holding it, comparing the feelings._

_"I'm dreaming," she told herself._

_"Lizard! Six minutes, where's my food?"_

_She turned deadpan to Brigette. "I'm dreaming," she echoed. "And you're dead."_

_With that, maggots started crawling out of Brigette's eyes as her face shriveled on her skull, all grey and green. "Li-zaaaard!"_

_"Oh, fuck me… " That pins and needles feeling intensified, and she began frantically flinging her hand back and forth. Her heart began to beat faster. "Please wake up, Liz! Please!"_

_Brigette's bony sack suddenly fell on her, and she jumped back, catching herself on the sizzling hot griddle with her left hand. She froze, turning to stare at her hand. It just laid there, turning red then black from the infernal heat. She tried to move it, but she couldn't "Fuckfuckfuck-!"_

_She began to scream, Brigette's body howled, and her hand... Her hand just laid there squealing like a teapot as blood-red steam escaped, the skin melting and flaming all at once, dead on the grill._

_"Cookie!"_

_"Help me! It won't move!"_

_"It's okay, Cookie, I'm here!"_

_"Where?"_

"Right here. She'll be right…"

She opened her eyes, quickly adjusting to the dim light. She wasn't in the diner anymore. Realizing she was back at the ocean shack nestled between Junkrat and Roadhog, she knew she was awake, but the dream didn't stop, that intense burning and stinging still plaguing her hand. She sat up with a jolt as a particularly painful shock throbbed through her limb. "Jamie!"

He shot up in bed beside her and cradled her to his chest. "Shh, you're safe."

She began shaking her arm again. "I can't… I can't…"

He grabbed hold of her hand and began rubbing it between his. "It'll pass. Try not to think about it."

Roadhog bent over her with one of those yellow cans, administering it to her without her even noticing in her panic. She just kept staring at the moonlight glinting off the metal of her prosthetic. _That's not my arm…_

Once Roadhog had finished with the canister, Junkrat moved her offending limb around his back out of her view. "I told you, we'll get you through this."

After a few more breaths, she could feel the chemicals working their way through her body, and the pain downgraded to the original itchy sensation. She slowly pulled her mech arm away from Junkrat to examine it again.

His other arm still around her, he ran his fingers through her hair, pulling her face to his to get her attention. That unstable look in his eyes was replaced with warm concern as he looked into her dilated pupils. "All better?" he asked with sincerity.

"I think so."

"When that happens, you have to stay calm, okay? Try not to think about it or even look at it…"

Following his advice, she found herself focusing on Junkrat's abs. Shirtless, hard, sculpted...

He kept speaking to her reassuringly, but it was just a jumbled mess in her ears. "Okay," she replied automatically. The physical pain was gone, but she suddenly felt an overwhelming emotional drain. She let her face fall to his chest as she fought a cry.

He continued petting her hair. "Can I get you anything?"

"No." She took a ragged breath. "I just need a minute."

"Have all the minutes, Cookie." He rocked back and forth with her in his arms, vaguely realizing how strange that sounded coming from him. "I don't mind."

* * *

_"Han pasado tres días, y aunque el poder se ha restablecido en la mayor parte de la ciudad, todavía hay muchos lugares esperando. La única señal de 'Los Junkers' desde la explosión es el graffiti de la bomba en toda la ciudad, muchos de los cuales cubren pistas anteriores dejadas por 'Los Muertos'. Muchos temen que la intención sea una guerra de pandillas ..."_

Although the TV's audio was turned off, Junkrat kept reading the closed captions. He turned back to Liz and Roadhog at the cantina's table with a giggle.

"I can only make out a little bit," Liz told him, impressed that he knew so much Spanish. "What are they saying?"

"I have no idea," he confessed, laughing more. "But they said 'Junkers' so I _know_ it's about us!"

"Keep it down, drongo," Roadhog urged him.

"Who cares who's listening? They whole point was to get Sombra's attention," he reminded him.

"Yeah, but I don't want anyone else's attention if we don't need it."

"We're gonna need it if she's ever gonna find us." Junkrat took a gulp of his beer. "Three days has been long enough. She should be here by now."

Liz glanced around at the other cantina patrons, noting that no one seemed to care they were there. Not even the neon skull-faced Los Muertos members lingering in the shadows. She shuddered. "What happens after Sombra finds us?"

"We have a 'talk' with her. Make some arrangements. Move onto the next phase of the plan."

"There's more?"

"Hell yeah, there's more!" He leaned in, huddling over the center of the table and switching to a whisper. "You're one of us, now. I can trust you, eh?"

She came closer, emphasizing her unity with the group. "Absolutely."

His smile grew, really believing her this time. "Ya know how America has the largest military budget and all the major American corporations are the main companies that manufacture and distribute tanks and weapons to the rest of the world?"

"Sure, I guess? I never really noticed."

He snickered. "Yeah, the lobbyists would love to hear you say that. The same ones that want the conflict with the Omnics to continue so they can keep making money. It's _always_ about the money."

"Okay…"

" _We_ blow up Wall Street, all their stock drops, and then they're all broke!"

She grimaced. "I don't think that's how Wall Street works."

"Oh, like you're real knowledgeable on Wall Street when you don't even know what's going on with your own military!" He leaned back in the booth, knocking back the rest of his beer. "Either way, they're war profiteers, and they deserve it, so fuck 'em." He punctuated that last sentiment by slamming his glass down on the table.

"Doesn't that make you a war profiteer if you sell the Goddess to Sombra?"

"Who said anything about _selling_ her?"

"I just assumed that –"

"Never assume anything, mate. You know what they say about assuming? It makes you look like an ass."

"That's not –"

"I need her help to enact the final phase of the plan. Without the meddling hands of the suits, the war would play out naturally, which we all know what that means."

"No, what?"

"You ever read a sci fi book?"

"Have _you_?"

He smirked. "The Omnics would wipe out humanity, of course. Everyone knows that. But with the Goddess released on the world controlling all the Omnics, the outcome would be the opposite. She'll shut them all down, make them turn on each other and such."

Liz raised an eyebrow at him. "I was wrong. You're not a war profiteer. You're a terrorist."

"C'mon, you know you hate the Omnics, too!"

"I'm not talking about that. You know, the logic behind the meat of your plan is hard enough to follow…"

"It's okay, I know you're still new to all this."

"So lemme just start with the most obvious question I've got. Essentially, isn't the AI an Omnic, too? How can you trust it?"

"Because _this_ one's gonna do what I want."

"Okaaay, so for the sake of argument, let's say you do have full control over the AI, and it has full control over the world's Omnics. There's still no controlling the humans, and there's bound to be a fair amount of human casualties directly caused by our actions."

"Yeah, well, the ends justifies the means."

"Like the gas station attendant?" Her arms crossed.

"You still on about that?"

"I just want to make sure I'm not endorsing a coup that wipes out half of humanity in an effort to 'save' it."

"Yeah, but I'm not trying to…" He stopped mid-sentence, hung up on a previous comment. "Wait. Isn't 'terrorist' kind of a strong word?"

"I know what I said."

"You really think I'm a terrorist?" His feelings genuinely seemed hurt.

"If you're not, then what are you?"

"A freedom fighter…eh, er, a misunderstood one."

"Uh uh." She waved her hands in front of her face. "I'm not nearly drunk enough to explain everything that's wrong with that statement."

He shoved his empty mug her way. "Then go get us another round."

She snatched it up as she stood. "Fine."

Once she had approached the bartender and gave him their order, she leaned on the bar, casually directing a whisper to the man in the adjacent stool. "Why are you here?"

He tilted the brim of his cowboy hat up so she could see his smirk better. "Hey, darlin'."

"You're really pushing it, Jesse."

"You're one to talk. Where's that program you promised me?"

Her elbow began to itch again, and she scratched it idly. "I know where it is, but I can't get to it right now."

"I don't know if I can afford to give you more time. Where is it?"

"I'm handling it, okay?"

"I'm not stupid, Liz. All these waves ya'll have been making are specifically targeted to get the attention of Los Muertos, and I got news for you." He motioned a hand around the bar. "It worked."

"Is that a fact?"

"They want an audience with Sombra, they got it. And if they're going to sell that thing to her, I can't let that happen."

"Don't worry, no one's selling anything. It'll be fine."

"Liz, I gotta tell ya, I don't think you understand what you're getting yourself involved in."

She glared at him. "I do understand. More than you'll ever know. I was right about him. He's really not that bad."

"Him?"

"Junkrat."

"So _he's_ the one you're crushing on."

"What?! I-" She clapped a hand over her own mouth, glancing across the room at Junkrat to make sure he wasn't paying attention. Both of them stayed quiet as the bartender came and set her drinks down.

Once the bartender was out of earshot, McCree continued, "If he's such a good guy, why is he looking for Sombra instead of Overwatch?"

"There is no Overwatch anymore. Even you said so."

"What if there was?"

"What are you saying?"

He nodded their way. "AI or no, we need to get them off the streets."

Her expression involuntarily softened. "We?"

"They're doing way more harm than good, and if you won't let me bring them in, they still need to be stopped... Or at least given some guidance. If I provided a way, would they work with Overwatch?"

"I-I don't… I'm not sure."

"Why don't you find out and get back to me?" He stood up from his stool. "I'm gonna go take a leak. When I get back, I'm gonna need an answer." He started toward the door marked 'Hombres'. "So sharpen that tongue of yours."

She brought their drinks back to the table, easing uncomfortably into her chair.

"Oi, what took so long?"

"I…" She took a deep breath and held it in.

"What? What is it, Cookie?"

She let the breath out in a sigh. "Know what? I think maybe we should get out of here."

Before either of them could react to her statement, they were interrupted by a disembodied female voice with a native accent. "Looking for me?" The voice's owner seemingly appeared right before their eyes, an attractive young woman with half-shaved purple hombre hair and, for some reason, toe shoes.

Junkrat laughed hysterically. "As a matter of fact, yes!"

"No manches. We should definitely talk, but… not _here_." She sneered, beckoning them with a wave of her fingers, but Liz couldn't quit staring at her feet in those shoes. "Vámonos."

…

When McCree emerged from the bathroom, he took a look around, not seeing Liz or the Junkers anywhere. He pushed his hat up, rubbing his face in frustration. "Goddammit."


	13. Kiss Me Deadly

"Look at _you!"_ Sombra waved her hand gracefully in front of the three misfits seated in front of her, while she slowly paced the floor of the abandoned building she had dragged them to.

Liz shifted in her chair, glancing at her companions, but neither one of them returned her look. Roadhog was carefully bouncing his calculated attention from the door to the window overlooking downtown Dorado, but Junkrat never took his excited eyes off the elusive shadow girl before them.

"Junkrat and Roadhog. And…" She waved a dismissive hand in Liz's general direction. "This girl. Internationally wanted criminals, robbing a bank on Los Muertos turf. There was a time I would have cared about that, but that time has passed. Returning and causing a city-wide blackout, looting, rioting. You're either really stupid or you've got huevos…"

"I'm smarter than I look, mate," Junkrat informed her.

She lorded over them with a snicker. "And then the intentional defacement of 'street art.'" Stopping in front of Junkrat, she kneeled until she was eyelevel with him. "You don't _actually_ want a gang war, amigo," she stated scathingly. "You and I both know that."

"How very astute of you," he replied.

One corner of her mouth curved up wickedly as she straightened her posture, clasping her hands behind her back. "You've gone through an awful lot of trouble to get my attention, and now you have. I could have just let Los Muertos take care of things and been rid of you, but I suspect that you might actually have something useful. I'll give you your chance to speak, but I'm going to preface it by saying I would appreciate it if you didn't waste any more of my precious time."

"I feel like you already know why we're here."

"What did I just say, cabrón? Get to the point before I lose my patience."

"Ok!" he exclaimed cheerfully. "Would you have any interest in a God AI?"

"¡Ahí está! And would I be correct in guessing that is that infamous treasure you've been toting around?"

"Oh, yeah." He was almost drooling at that point.

"Ahora estamos hablando. Let's see it."

"I'm not just gonna _give_ it to you!"

She let out an exasperated sigh. "What do you want, junker?"

"The end of all Omnics."

Her face contorted. "¿Qué?"

"They're vile and repulsive and, if left unchecked, will eventually take over the world."

"I think you're giving those buckets of bolts a little too much credit," she said with a smirk.

" _I_ think a person of your reputation would be interested in who you're contending for the number one spot with," he snapped back goadingly.

" _I_ think you're punching out of your league!"

"Don't underestimate me just yet. I have a plan."

Liz winced at the condescending chuckle that shook out of Sombra, but the Junkers were unmoved. "Okay, culero. Lay it on me."

"I'll spare you the dirty details at the moment, but I _am_ going to need your help hacking the Omnics. I need as many of them as possible exposed to this God AI at once. Doesn't that sound like fun?"

"That's your plan?" Sombra crossed her arms, still wearing a shit-eating grin. "What did you think I was going to do with it anyhow?"

"Maybe that, maybe something else. But it's _my_ treasure, and I need to be along for the ride to make sure things go _my_ way."

"No dice, junker. I can appreciate where you're coming from on that, and by the way, good job getting on TV and making a name for yourself. I'm sure you're a real celebrity down in _Junkertown_." She said that last word in her version of an Australian accent with mocking contempt. "But you really don't pull that kind of weight around here or anywhere else for that matter. And you and I both know that God AI is worthless in your hands, so let's just get this over with. Name your price."

Junkrat's demeanor began to shift as her hostility was finally starting to get through to him. "It's _not_ for _sale_!"

"Qué adorable…"

"Look here, this is your chance to get in on the ground floor of the winning team. If you don't help, that's not going to stop me! I'm going through with this plan, with or without you, so –"

"I got news for you, junker. I _am_ the 'winning team.' Either you sell me that God AI or I'll just take it by force. You could leave here with fat pockets or a fat lip. You're lucky I'm giving you a choice."

"As much as I love money, I'm going to have to pass on that."

"My suspicions were right. You don't have huevos, you're just really stupid," she stated with boredom, pulling up a projection of some buttons in midair and punching them in some cryptic sequence. "It's a shame, really."

"I'm _not_ stupid!" Junkrat growled, kicking his chair out from under him as he stood. "Only Roadhog can call me that!"

"Mira, I'd love to stay and chat… but I'm not going to." With her last press, she disappeared into purple static the same way she had appeared to them before.

The burning in his eyes transformed to confusion. "Hey! Where'dya go?" He began darting every which way, certain he was hearing her laughter all around him.

Standing on shaky legs, Liz put a hand on his shoulder. "Junkrat…"

He jumped at her touch. "Not now, Cookie!"

This time, Roadhog took hold of his harness, urgently pulling him backwards towards the door. "Yes, now!"

"No! No!" He fought to free himself every step of the way. "We came so far! It can't end like this!"

They all heard the ghost of her giggles as the door clicked locked from the outside. Without a wasted second, Roadhog brought his massive fist down on the doorknob, knocking it clean off and kicking the door open. Liz ran to the elevator, but Roadhog shook his head. "We take the stairs. I'm not getting stuck on a hacked elevator."

"Aw, you're no fun!" Sombra's disembodied voice teased.

Junkrat managed to shimmy himself out of Roadhog's grasp, but the enormous bodyguard, loyal to his true job, picked him up and flung him kicking and screaming over his shoulder as he went for the stairs. Liz followed suit barreling down behind them. A couple flights from the bottom, she saw a purple flash in front of Roadhog as he crossed Sombra's invisible path, losing his footing and causing him and Junkrat to tumble down, bouncing and swearing all the way out the door in a painful, chaotic heap.

"Shit!" She picked up her pace to catch up with them, but got hung up on a landing when she felt a tug at her shirt. With nothing visibly holding her back, she knew it was Sombra. She just kept pulling and prodding, eventually grabbing Liz's waist, but she couldn't get free.

Liz reached for her knife, flicking it out and blindly stabbing around.

"Put that away, puta!" Sombra commanded.

Liz flailed with her other hand, happening to catch hold of her hair. Sombra screamed as Liz began dragging her down the steps by the handful of her mane. "It didn't… have to… be like this!" Liz told her as she thumped down stair after stair, each thud accentuated by a static buzz as Sombra become more visible.

When Sombra finally caught her footing, she began clawing at Liz with her sharp violet nails. Liz had had enough, yanking her head down by the hair one final time and slashing the blade across it.

Sombra stopped struggling, righting herself as her eyes went fierce. She carded a hand through the strands of her new shorter 'do. "Now, you've fucked up!" She ripped the knife from Liz's hands, and Liz threw her arms up to her face in a block, but instead of Sombra stabbing her, she brought the blade down forcefully into the stair rail, pinning Liz by her chef's coat. And with a wave of her hand, she disappeared again.

It took Liz a moment to realize what had happened, giving Sombra exactly the head start she needed. Once she caught up with the situation, Liz grabbed onto the knife's handle, yanking with all of her force to release it, intent on leaving with both the blade and her coat. After a couple hard tugs, she was free and scrambled to the bottom of the stairs, hitting the door with her entire body, but it didn't budge.

It knocked the wind out of her, but she shook it off and tried the door again, realizing it was locked. "No!" She banged her fist against the door. "No! Junkrat! Roadhog!" She ran back up a flight of stairs and tried to exit on another floor, but that one was locked, too. "Oh, fuck me…"

Junkrat and Roadhog had only just picked themselves up outside when the door slammed shut on its own behind them. Roadhog went for the door while Junkrat began setting up a bear trap.

"What are you… doing?!" Roadhog grunted as he repeatedly slammed his shoulder into it.

"She's still around here somewhere, and I intend to catch her!"

He stopped and unholstered his scrapgun as he noticed every alleyway opening around them beginning to fill with Los Muertos in full skeleton body paint. Junkrat, feeling her annoyingly pulling at his hair, was batting at the nothingness above his head. "Show yourself, you miserable bludger!"

With that, Sombra decided to oblige. "You wanna talk? Let's talk!" She materialized in front of him, standing with her hands on her hips. "This is your last chance to hand over the God AI."

Junkrat folded his arms. "Never! If you're not gonna work with me, you'll never even lay eyes on it."

She laughed heartily. "You are just so _precious!_ I _know_ where it is, ratón de basura! It's in that leg of yours, no?"

He caught his eyes from going wide, but it was still apparent that she had rattled him.

"But let me tell you something you don't know. I don't _need_ that God AI at all! I'll admit it would have been nice to add to my collection." She pulled up her computer projection again, punching buttons as she spoke. "But anything it can do, I can do better. Your treasure is nothing but garbage. And that's exactly what I would expect from someone like you. Garbage."

Fuming, he reached for his frag launcher. "Is that how it is?"

"I can tell you're seeing rojo right now, so I think it's time we wrap this up." All that button-pushing resulted in a 60 second timer, which she promptly abandoned to sashay over to one of the neon-painted gang members, placing a key in his hand.

Junkrat's eyebrow cocked. "What's going on?"

"You didn't really think I'd meet up with you without an escape plan, did you?" She disappeared with a wave of her hand, leaving behind only the timer which had just started ticking down. "Also, you're not the only one that can blow up buildings…"

As soon as the words left her mouth, the gang members began to scatter.

"Better move fast if you wanna save your little _novia_." Her voice faded with that last statement.

Junkrat snapped his face towards the door, suddenly aware that Cookie was pounding on it relentlessly and screaming his name. Not wasting another moment, he took off after the one with the key. Los Muertos had a bit of a head start, but Junkrat improvised, throwing a concussion mine to the ground and detonating it just as he moved passed it, sending him flying over the guy's head.

He screeched to a halt when he saw Junkrat fall in front of him, juking from side to side.

Junkrat cracked a sharp smile, tossing another mine into the gang member's arms. "Happy Birthday!" he cackled, throwing an arm around his neck as he pushed the button again, sending them both soaring back to the door next to Roadhog.

"I got this!" he told his partner from above as he released the guy dangling in front of him by his neck before either of them had reached the ground. "Get the truck!"

Junkrat hit the pavement in a roll, but the gang member slumped to the concrete, grabbing at his chest and gasping for breath as Junkrat patted him down for the key. He unlocked the door, and Liz tumbled out into his arms.

She started to say something but he put a hand over her mouth, pointing to the projection of the timer. "Thank me later, we gotta go!"

They took off running, but behind them, they heard a gurgled cough followed by a battle cry of, "¡Vete al infierno!"

Liz looked back to see Los Muertos gang member going for his gun as he pulled himself to his feet.

"What are you doing?!" She screeched, giving Junkrat a shove. "Shoot him!"

"I'm sparing his miserable life. I thought… That whole thing about the servo bludger… I thought you didn't want me to kill anyone if I didn't have to!"

"He's a _bad guy_! It's okay to kill the bad guys!"

"Aren't I _also_ a 'bad guy'?"

"No! The very fact that we are having this conversation proves you're not. Now, hurry! He's coming this way!"

"No, he's not," Roadhog calmly stated in his booming voice from half a block away as he extended his hook, pulling the Muertos member into the bear trap. It snapped shut on his leg, and he was stuck in place, screaming in agony. Roadhog rained down fire on him with his scrap gun, but another group of Los Muertos gunners were closing in on them the further they got from the abandoned building

Junkrat seemingly wasn't paying any attention to them, grinding to a halt. "You don't think I'm a bad guy?" he asked with childlike sincerity.

"Is this really the time to talk about this?"

His shoulders narrowed in a shrug. "Why not?"

Willfully obliging to his madness, her tone softened. "No, I don't think you're a bad guy, Jamie. If you were, I wouldn't still be here."

With a giddy, maniacal laugh, he suddenly unstrapped the tire from his back and flung it to the ground in front of them.

"Fire in the hole!" The words echoed down the alley as he pulled the ripcord, and the tire took off on its own. It all happened so fast, so fluid, like he'd done this a thousand times before.

Mesmerized, her eyes were barely able to keep up with the tire's path bowling for the gang members. Even less so when he grabbed her by the hips, pulling her close.

The timer ticked down to its final digits. 5…4…

She gasped as his mech arm slid quickly up her back, his other hand wrapping its fingers around the remote detonator. Their noses barely touching, she could feel his breath across her cheeks.

3… 2…

Once he'd reached her neck, his metal digits slid up into her hair.

1…

He pressed his lips on hers with surprising force, simultaneously pushing the trigger button. Her eyes went wide as the kabooms shook their bodies into each other, whipping their clothes and hair in a frenzy, followed immediately by his tongue sweeping past her lips, gently caressing hers. Her eyes slowly sliding closed, she leaned into his kiss, goosebumps springing up across her body in time with the explosion's aftershocks.

The detonator slipped through his fingertips, dropping to the ground beside him. With his other hand now free, he let it slide around her, stopping in the small of her back and holding her possessively. Freely returning his embrace, Liz felt like the explosion was still swelling, expanding, engulfing the entire world around them.

Much too soon, Junkrat's tongue receded and he caught hold of her bottom lip, letting go of it with a bullish suck. "I used tongue that time," he informed her snarkily.

"I know," she replied, breathless and limp in his arms.

More Los Muertos gang members began to emerge from the dust of the explosion. With riotous cackling, Junkrat took her by the hand and began dragging her with him as he bounced grenades behind them from his frag launcher. He glanced over at her with a silly grin, tripping over her own feet and trying to keep up. "We need to get you your own gun."

"Yeah, maybe," she replied automatically, not really thinking about the current pursuit anymore. She just kept staring at the insanely happy expressions he was making as he sent gunner after gunner to their maker with his smiley-faced grenades.

_Oh, god! I'm falling for him…_

Not a moment too soon, Roadhog pulled in front of them with the truck. Junkrat hoisted her up into the back and scrambled up the bumper himself. His cohort gassed on it, and he taunted the gang members with a flick of his tongue as he slammed the truck's back door shut, turning to Liz with flushed cheeks and a wild look in his eye. "Now, where were we?"

He palmed the back of her head, chasing her backwards with kisses until her thighs hit the counter. His hands plunged to her bottom, boosting her onto the surface, and she instinctively wrapped her limbs around his waist.

He mowed greedily at her lips, a brush here, a suck there, until her mouth parted, and he hungrily dipped inside with less restraint than before. A mewl slipped from Liz, vibrating lewdly against his deeply embedded tongue that was busy exploring everything it could reach. Her hands careened down, pressing soft fingertips into the firm peaks and valleys of his chest and abs, and his legs buckled with a moan back that she could feel in her throat.

Abruptly pulling away, he pressed his forehead against hers, gasping for breath. "I still don't understand why you wanted to come with us so badly or why you stayed." He continued panting, one hand desperately clinging to her face, the other trailing down her side. His finger mindlessly poked just under her waistband. "But… I couldn't be happier right now."

"What about what just happened with Sombra?"

"Bugger that!" He withdrew his wandering finger, tracing it over her shoulder, pushing the fabric of her chef coat further down. "There'll be other plans…" His face sank into the crook of her neck, muffling his words. "I'll blow up that bridge when I get to it."

He swept the lightest of kisses at her bare shoulder, progressing up her neck, and her entire body brimmed with electricity. His lips barely brushed the delicate skin at first, followed by a faint scraping of teeth. Gently sucking at her nape, he moved closer to her jawline and increased his pressure bit by bit.

"Jamie…"

"Yes?" he answered briefly through an otherwise busy mouth, picking up exactly where he left off, sucking harder.

Her back arched. "Jamie…"

"Yes?!" he answered again with palpable anticipation.

_It shouldn't feel this good…_

He suddenly bit down, and she gasped. "Jamie!"

His tongue swathed across the fresh wound just once with finesse before resuming its suction.

"Stop…" she pleaded noncommittally.

He let up, slowly raising his eyes to meet hers, looking confused. "You really want me to stop?"

She pulled her coat back over her shoulder, stalling as she fingered the tender mark he had left. She glanced at the front of the truck, sizing up Roadhog's vantage point. "Not here."

Observing her apparent apprehension, he grinned, holding her head to his. "Whatever you want, Cookie."

She lowered her feet to the ground, gently pushing past his lustful grasp to the front of the truck to take the passenger seat. Junkrat, unfazed by the delay, was a step behind her the whole way.

He draped himself over her seatback. "Hey, Mako! Did you see how many of those drongos I took out with that rip tire?"

"Yes."

"Well, tell me about it, then!" He exchanged a glance with Liz. "I sorta missed the whole thing, ah haha ha ha!"

Liz tuned them out, leaning her head against the window and staring at Junkrat's bite mark in her reflection in the side view mirror as she contemplated Roadhog's warning all the way back to the beach shack.

_And what's Jesse gonna say?_


	14. Breathe Me

As they were pulling up to their usual parking spot, Junkrat gave Roadhog a playful punch in the shoulder. "Why don't you go get us dinner?"

Liz could feel the scowl he was making under his mask. "There's nothing around for miles."

"Then do whatever." Junkrat already had Liz by the hand, dragging her out of the truck. "Just make yourself scarce for a while, eh?"

He led her inside the dark shack, embracing her as soon as they were on the other side of the doorway, his hand casually sliding into her pocket.

"What are you -?"

Producing her lighter, he reached over and lit a candle with a giggle, and then tossed it back to her.

"Oh."

With his palms resting on her hips, he guided her backwards to the bed in the center of the one-room shack, pulling her coat off her so slowly, she almost didn't notice. When her legs caught the edge of the bed, he let his lips fall to hers, carefully pushing her horizontal and crawling over her. He was being gentle and attentive, a drastically different energy than what he had shown her in the back of the truck.

Having led her to the head of the bed, he sat up with a knee on either side of her, unstrapping his harness and tossing it over the edge of the mattress. He paused there, looking down on her contently.

"What?"

Letting his hands fall to her stomach, he rested them at the band of her shorts. "I want you, Cookie."

"Jamie…"

"I want to do horrible, nasty things to you, but… in a good way."

She sighed. "I _knew_ what you meant, silly. You really didn't have to clarify that."

"But can I get specific anyway?" He began to lower himself to her. "Just for fun?"

"Okay…"

"First of all, I want to kiss you again," he said, just before crushing his lips to hers once more. Falling into the rhythm of it, Liz was just beginning to feel her inhibitions melt away when he lifted to continue speaking. "I want to put my mouth aaall over you…" He was kissing his way down her torso, just barely pushing back the bottom of her shirt to land his lips softly on her belly. He looked up at her with longing. "Work at you a bit with my tongue." His metal hand slid over the fabric between her legs, and she began pulsing madly for him.

"Oh geez…"

"Make you come so hard, Hog's gonna have to hook you up to some intravenous fluids after to keep you hydrated." Her let out a small laugh at his own joke. "I wanna see you panting, sweaty, and _convulsing_ with pleasure." He withdrew his hand and sank onto her body again. "And just when you think you can't take anymore…"

She gasped as the bulge in his pants pressed into her.

"I'll make you come again!"

"Jamie…"

"Please, don't ever stop saying my name like that," he purred.

She frowned. "You talk a big game. An enticing one at that, but… you're moving kinda fast."

His face slacked with a pitiful groan as he adjusted himself. "Maybe." He rolled to her side, propping his head up in his hand. "But you really seem to be cracking on to me. I thought you wanted to…"

"It's not like I don't."

"Then what's stopping ya?"

Her brow crumpled, and she reached for his arm, throwing it over her. "Just shut up and hold me."

He relented with a smile, squeezing her tightly. "This is good, too."

She cuddled up to him, much too anxious to appreciate how comfortable it was. His chest rose and fell with a happy sigh. "I'm so glad I found you, Cookie. You make me feel… like I matter."

"Do you normally feel like you don't?"

"I try not to let it get to me, but there's a lot of people back home that would go out their way to make me feel like shit."

"You do matter, Jamie. Fuck anyone who tells you otherwise."

"Bugger them! I'd rather talk about us! Remember when I did the bit in the diner where I jumped on the table and threatened ya, and you immediately started laughing?"

"That was a bit?"

"Sure! I still think about it. If I had been in your shoe –"

"Shoe, singular. I get it."

"– I probably would have done the same thing. But not many people could say that. I knew right then that you were –"

She paused him with a finger across his lips. "Don't say anything too damning."

He pressed a kiss to her fingertip and lowered her hand. "Ha ha, I was just gonna say I see a lot of meself in ya. You took to handling explosives like a pro. Really seem to appreciate them."

"Maybe not as much as you."

He laughed lightly. "Maybe not. But there's also your tendency to tell a porky." Before she could question his choice of words, he took her mech hand in his and ran his real hand lovingly through her singed-short hair. "You're even starting to look a bit like me, heh heh heh."

"Gee, thanks."

"Hey, that's a compliment!" He grinned wildly. "Just wait, they'll see! We're gonna do great things – me, you, and Roadhog. We'll find a way to make that God AI work on our own, take out those Omnics heaps better than Overwatch ever could, and everyone will practically worship us!"

"Is that what you want? To be worshipped?"

"Not specifically, but it's defo a perk. All those nations will have to drop our bounties, give us anything we want…"

"So what _do_ you want?"

"To give you the world, Cookie! Anything your heart desires. And I'll take you back home to Junkertown and show you around to all those insufferable bludgers who said I'd never amount to anything. They'll all get to see that despite everything, I found a smart, pretty, dyed-in-the wool badass girl that does more than just tolerate me. And that bitch will have no choice but to recognize our greatness, maybe even relinquish her position."

"…Who?"

"The Queen! We'll overthrow her. Just imagine it, Cookie. Me, you, and Roadie, ruling Junkertown! All that treasure and all that desert aaand… I literally can't think of anything better!"

"You want me to go to Junkertown with you?"

"No worries, mate. Straya's got beaches, too. You're gonna love it there."

The minutes ticked by and the candle burned out. Sometime before that, his rambling had slowed to a stop, and his breathing had transitioned to snores.

_I'm not really like Junkrat, am I?_

She liked him. A lot. And somehow, she really had become attracted to him, making it all the more difficult to stall his physical advances earlier. But at the bottom of everything, there was Jesse, her one true love, and she was certain she couldn't live her life with someone else, wondering what if.

_He thinks I'm going to live in Junkertown with him._

Filled with anxiety, she realized things weren't _getting_ out of her control. She was past that. They already were.

Tick tock, tick tock. It had been long enough for her to have decided what she needed to do. She carefully lifted his arm off of her and did her best not to jar the bed as she got up.

With her coat on, she was reaching for the doorknob when she heard his voice behind her. "Where are you going?"

"Just to smoke," she replied calmly.

He sat up abruptly. "I'll come with you."

"That's not really necessary."

"There's no reason you can't smoke in here."

"I didn't want to disturb you."

"Too late. You already did." He let his foot and peg hit the floor and stood with apprehension written all over his face. "Where were you really going?"

She read him in the dim light and clammed up, fidgeting and scratching her arm.

"I've been where you are right now. I know what you're trying to do."

"Jamie..."

"Why now, though? Just when I finally started to believe you were one of us… That you actually liked me…"

The brokenhearted look on his face made Liz's chest tighten. "After everything you've done for me, I didn't want to have to go through this with you."

"You're really leaving?"

"And after all the times _you_ tried to leave _me_ , why couldn't you just let me go?" she whined, powerless.

He shook his head in disbelief. "What did I do, Cookie? Whatever it is, I'm sorry."

"You didn't do anything wrong."

"Don't make me beg."

"Then don't."

"Then don't go! Please, don't do this, Cookie…" His lower lip shook with a whimper. "I think I love you."

His words crushed her, and she turned her head away. "No, you don't. You hardly know me."

"I know you enough to know I like you. Your smile, your laugh. That stupid little smirk you do at just about everything. The cute little way you argue with me when I push your buttons, the way you look at me… Please, give me a chance."

"It's not you. It's… Jesse."

Her invocation of that name made him cringe. "Pfft! Really? I hate to break this to ya, but he doesn't care about you, mate."

"You don't understand."

"I understand plenty. Some good-lookin' bloke that you had a childhood crush on still pays attention to you every now and then, and it gets your panties moist. I'm sure seeing you turn to jelly around him boosts his ego and all, but if he cared about you, he would have snatched you up by now."

She just stared at him blankly, the truth behind his observation slowly sinking in.

He could tell tears were stinging her eyes, but he just couldn't leave it alone. It only seemed fair if she was going to hurt him. "How did I do? Was I bang on?"

"Mako was right. I never should have let things go this far between us."

"Tell me if I'm wrong!"

When he raised his voice, she burned, swallowing the lump in her throat and summoning the tried-and-true anger that got her through every other tough situation in her life. "You _are_ wrong. He kissed me."

"Really? When?"

"A few days ago."

"Yeah sure, I'll buy that. He followed you all the way down here to Mexico so you could sneak around and pash when you weren't busy cracking onto me."

A disturbed laugh came out of her as she pushed down a cry. "Bingo! Right again!"

"How stupid do you think I am?"

"This is impossible, I'm not doing this with you!" She turned for the door once more, but he grabbed her wrist, pulling her back to him.

"Where are you going to go? There's nothing left out there for you, remember?"

The tears finally found their way out, trickling down her cheek. "Why would you _say_ that?!"

"Because..." He eased his grip on her, his combative tone softening. "I want you to stay."

Despite his raw honesty, his earlier comments still had her defensive. "You want me to stay, even though I lied to you the entire time I was with you?" she goaded.

"You trying to tell me there's nothing between us? I know you couldn't lie straight in bed, Cookie."

"What?!"

"Ya tell porkies. You're a liar. I don't care about that."

She looked him dead in the eyes. "I'm trying to tell you Jesse really _was_ here! He was in the bar, tonight."

Realizing she was serious, panic struck him. "What…?"

"He was even right here at this shack the first night we were here."

As the magnitude of what she was saying became clear to him, the corners of his mouth drew down and his eye began to twitch.

"The truth is he's a bounty hunter…" By now, Junkrat's fuse was burning short, ready to blow, but Liz, having already said too much, saw no point in stopping now. "And I was trying to steal your treasure… to stop him from taking you in." If nothing else, at least she would have a clear conscious on the matter.

Junkrat could practically taste blood, glaring at her through narrow little slits.

She met his burning eyes and was obliterated by momentous fear. "I-I'm sorry, Jamie. I never meant to –"

"Get out," he growled through jagged, clenched teeth. " _Right now_ before I do something I'll regret."

Not wanting to test his wrath any further, she fled out the door. It slammed shut behind her, and when she looked back, she saw Roadhog sitting aside, quietly watching her.

Junkrat's frustrated screams mixed with crashing sounds were erupting behind the shack's closed door as Roadhog stood up. With his warning in mind, for a fleeting moment, she thought this was the end of her, but he just tossed her the truck keys. "Goodbye, Liz," he remarked with only mild scorn, content that she was leaving on her own.

She fumbled to catch them, storming away from him before he changed his mind about letting her off the hook. "He's all yours again," she hissed.

With a snort, he headed for the building. "And good riddance."

In his fit of rage, Jamison never heard the truck take off, but the door opening did catch his attention. He straightened up, afraid it was Cookie. What he would do if she came back, he wasn't sure, but it was probably a tossup between fuck her or kill, neither of which was ideal.

When he saw it was Mako, he unclenched his muscles in relief.

"She's gone," his bodyguard informed him.

Completely overwhelmed, Jamison's fury gave way to a sob, and he dove into Mako's chest. "I'm so sorry!" he bawled. "I should have listened to you!"

Mako sighed, putting an arm around him. "You don't have to apologize. I heard everything from outside."

"I really _am_ an idiot!"

Feeling the tears against his bare chest, Mako scowled. "No, you're not."

"Dammit! ….Why did she have to do this to me?"

Mako put his other arm around Jamison, patting his back.

Soon, his sobbing calmed down to a sniffle, and he took a deep breath, pulling away from him. "Never again, mate. I'll never trust another Sheila as long as I live."

"She'll be right, Jamie. I promise." Roadhog lit a cigarette and placed it on Jamison's pouting lips. "I'm here for you."


	15. Whistle for the Choir

She never saw them on the news anymore.

There was a brief mention about the abandoned building, giving the Junkers and "The Cook" credit for it, but the authorities never found any solid evidence one way or the other, and once she got back across the border, it was as though it never happened.

But still she would tune in to _A Moment In Crime_ or the local news of Wherever to see if there were any new heists in their names or updates on their whereabouts. She knew it was unlike them to be discreet, even if they were in the midst of plotting some new heinous crime. Days went by, then weeks. She began to wonder if McCree had picked them up after she split. It didn't take her long after to conclude that was the only thing that would explain why they seemingly disappeared.

But she couldn't think about that. It was behind her now. All of it. She was in a new town with a new name.

"Cookie! Order in!"

"Just a sec." She inadvertently leaned further toward the diner TV, paying close attention to the show's description of The Cook and the laundry list of suspected crimes, some she actually participated in, some she didn't. To her surprise, she wasn't being exclusively associated with the Junkers, and just about any random fire in the American Southwest was blamed on her. Fortunately, the only recent pictures of her they could get their hands on had her hiding behind long hair and her trusty purple aviators with her original arm.

An itch in her fingers was subconsciously triggered by the image of her arm still intact, and without a thought, she popped the top off a bottle of pills in her pocket, flicking one into her palm and then suavely into her mouth where it danced down her throat, shutting down the feeling.

"Come on, Cookie. They replay the same episode when your shift's over."

Her eyes still glued to her counterpart on the screen, she fumbled with the shades hanging on her chef coat to hide them under the folds. "Yeah. I know." Watching the show at work was her only opportunity, but no one needed to know that, so she slinked back to the kitchen.

Exactly six minutes later, she placed the plates of food in the pickup window and hit the bell, lingering as her eyes shifted to the TV on the front counter once more. A Moment In Crime was over. Time for a smoke break. She wiped her hands on her apron and headed for the back door, cigarette already in mouth.

This new diner wasn't so bad. Her coworkers didn't pick at her or get on her nerves, and the owner didn't pry too much when she interviewed with vagueness under her new identity. It was all pretty ideal given the circumstances, but she still didn't really _fit_ in so much as just _blend_ in. She realized blending is what her situation required, but she was still disappointed about having to resort to the old trade and resentful that most of the equipment in the taco truck turned out to be broken, making it not for much use beyond being her "home" at night, if you can call it that.

She lit her cigarette and watched with apathy as a delivery truck pulled around back where she was standing. The driver dropped down out of the cab with a nod in her direction. "Cookie."

"Hey, Dave." Putting out her cigarette she took the clipboard from him with automatic motions, skimming over the list as he rolled the back of the truck open. Standing in the walk-in with boxes being dropped off all around her, she checked the order in and signed off on it, following behind Dave as he pushed an empty dolly back to his truck. Relighting the other half of her cigarette and resuming her lean by the back door, she gave him a final wave and watched the truck pull off.

When the truck pulled out of her view, it revealed a car parked on the other side of it that wasn't there before. Newish and plain black, she didn't recognize it as one of the employees', therefore they had no business parking behind the diner. A bout of self-righteousness swelled up in her as she sucked the cigarette down to its butt and stormed back inside. The only thing she despised more than entitled servers was entitled customers.

Feeling superior, she approached the pickup window to scan the dining area to try and determine which uppity patron had the nerve to park in the sacred space. They were going to get a burger that was about to turn.

Her eyes stopped on a man standing off to the side, talking to a waitress. There was something off about him. He was dressed in dull, casual clothes, but his t-shirt was tucked in, his hair was too neat, and his mannerisms conveyed a sense of authority. Her heart sped up a little as she watched with heightened interest, forgetting all about the sleight against the employee parking lot.

When he pulled his hand out of his pocket, she saw the gold flash of a badge he had concealed.

_Oh, no!_

She moved aside, taking refuge behind the kitchen walls blocking their line of sight to her. As her mind raced, she briefly lamented how much she didn't want to have to start over again. But there it was. He had to be there for her. She'd have to flee.

_Nonsense. You're just being paranoid._

She scooted over along the wall to sneak another peek through the sliver of the slightly ajar kitchen door. She couldn't hear what they were saying, but she saw a worried look on the waitress's face as she slowly scanned her eyes over to the pickup window. A tiny gasp escaped Cookie when the man turned towards the kitchen, and she darted out the back as quickly and quietly as she could.

Once outside, she froze in place, blanking on what to do, and didn't start moving again until the door slammed shut behind her. Running towards her truck, she heard the door reopen, and in a panic, she dove for the closest cover: the dumpster enclosure.

Through the uneven gaps in the wooden panels of the gate she watched the waitress and the undercover cop strolling towards her truck and peeking into the windows under the shade of his hands.

There came a whisper from behind her. "He's gonna check here next, darlin'."

Startled, she clapped a palm over her own mouth momentarily. "Jesse?" she hissed.

An arm snaked over the back of the fence. "Give me your hand, and I'll help you over."

With minimal struggle, she got enough traction under her boots to push herself up as McCree pulled her over, but she hit the dirt with a muffled thud. Her chest pounding, they both peeked around the corner of the enclosure to see if he noticed, but he was still preoccupied with the food truck.

She looked up at McCree and spoke in a whisper. "How did you find me?"

His thumb pointed across the parking lot. "Same way he did, I'm sure."

"No, not how. I meant why. You already got your bounties, didn't you?"

"Actually… no," he huffed with a slight scowl.

Despite the gravity of her situation, a weight lifted off her heart. "Really?"

"Really. No thanks to you." He took her hand and started pulling her towards the neighboring woods. "We can talk later. Right now we need to 'disappear into the sunset'."

Cookie shook her head. "I need my truck, first."

"Don't be ridiculous."

"Everything I own is in there –"

"We'll get you new stuff, darlin'."

Yanking herself out of his grip, she glared daggers. "I'm not leaving without that truck! It's all I have left of –" She gave herself pause as she noticed his expression change to a confounded one. She stripped her voice of its previously overbearing emotion as she turned her gaze back towards the vehicle in question. "I'm not leaving without that truck," she refrained more calmly.

He took a moment to absorb her inexplicable gravity. With a sigh, he unholstered his revolver and tossed it to her, immediately producing a second one. "Well, if we're really doing this…" He swung the cylinder open and began loading it.

Cookie gave a cool gaze to the gun in her hand.

"…When he starts coming for the dumpster, we'll circle around the other side –"

Never looking up, she interrupted him. "Is this thing loaded?"

"Yes."

"I've never held a gun before."

"It works exactly like you think it will. Now pay attention. Keep both hands on it and both eyes open, and _do not_ point it at anything you don't intend to shoot, got it?"

She brought the butt of the revolver to her face to look down the sight.

Quickly becoming frustrated, McCree put his palm over the barrel, pushing it down. "And don't hold it that close to your face either. You're not actually going to fire it, okay? Just follow my lead."

She raised it back up, further from her, still staring down the sights.

"Liz, are you listening?"

She aimed the barrel at the black car. "Like this?" She pulled the trigger. _Bang pop hissssss_. The back tire went flat. In a flash, the cop drew his pistol, shouting commands at her to come out.

The waitress pointed to the enclosure. "She's in the dumpster!"

"Goddammit, Liz!" McCree grabbed her arm and started dragging her around the back of the dumpster's fence, but she broke free of his grasp and started making a break for the truck. Bullets whizzed past her, and she blindly fired back until the revolver was empty, hitting nothing.

McCree, still in cover, flattened the front tire of the unmarked cruiser with a bullet of his own, taking the attention off of her. The cop turned towards his hiding spot, and no sooner than the officer's gun was pointed that way did another shot ring out, knocking it from his grasp. He was still looking at his empty hand in shock when McCree rolled out from behind the enclosure towards the now idling truck. She pulled on the steering wheel hard, nearing the dumpster and hardly slowing enough for him to hop in.

The officer sprang out of her path, going for his car radio, but they would be long gone before backup would arrive, already squealing out of the parking lot.

Barreling down the road at breakneck speed, the diner was barely in their rearview when she glanced over at the McCree with a smug grin. Reaching under her own ass, she produced the revolver from the back pocket where she had it tucked, tossing it on the dashboard. "Do I get to keep that?"

He snatched the piece up, returning it to its holster. "That's a big 'no'!"

She only pouted for a moment. "So, where to, cowboy?"

Spastically checking the side mirrors to see if they were being chased, her question went unheard. "What the fuck, Lizard!?"

She braked hard. "That's not my name!"

He threw one arm in front of his face and another on the dash as his body slammed forward with the force of the truck's inertia. "Point taken, just keep going!"

She accelerated once more, topping at a more reasonable speed as she took a ramp onto the interstate, merging with the rest of the heavy traffic. "Well, fuck me. It's rush hour," she muttered with almost boredom as she meandered over to the leftmost lane.

They rode for a couple miles before she finally broke free of the congestion and sped on ahead, quickly putting more distance between them and the incident.

Satisfied that they weren't being pursued, McCree leaned back in his seat, relighting the perpetual cigar in his mouth. "So what happened to you, Liz?"

"Cookie."

"What?"

"It's Cookie."

"What is?"

"Know what? Never mind what happened to me. Why did you come for me?"

His brow furled as he blew out a swirl of smoke. "I was trying to help you."

"Help me? Haven't you helped enough?"

"What do you mean?"

"I'll tell you what I mean." She reached over and snatched the cigar from him, popping it between her lips while staring dead ahead at the long stretch of tree-lined interstate before them. "You flit in and out of my life without warning…" She took a drag and exhaled long. "And every time, I'm just supposed to act like it's okay…"

"Liz –"

"It's Cookie!"

"Liz… Cookie…." He stole his cigar back from her. "I don't even know who you are anymore."

"No, Jess. I don't think you ever did."

"So you say." In her peripheral, he shot her a glare hot enough to feel. "That's not really fair of you."

"I'll tell you what isn't fair. You kissing me."

He stumbled right past speechless and recovered immediately, intent on subjugating her feelings as usual. "Ok, I'll admit, you got me there. But what was I supposed to do?"

"Anything but that…" she mumbled under her breath.

"I really do care about you, but you've been a loose cannon! I didn't know how else to relate to you or protect you. First you run off with those two disasters…"

His words drowned into the background as she became hypnotized by the ever still, ever unreachable horizon in the world buzzing around her.

She thought of palm trees swaying in the breeze.

_Junkrat placed his hands on the sides of her head, squeezing her cheeks inward until she looked like a chipmunk. "Anything?" he challenged with skepticism._

_"Anything," she echoed through her involuntarily pursed mouth._

_Without warning, he pulled her face to his and pressed their lips together tightly._

"….Liz? Liz?"

The sudden warmth in her cheeks grew as though she had been caught doing something wrong. "Hmm?"

"Are you just going to ignore me when I'm trying to apologize."

"Trying?" She brushed her fingertips across her face, attempting to quell the blush. "Were you or weren't you?"

Exasperated, his eyes trailed forward to the same elusive horizon. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have used you like that."

"No, you shouldn't have." Starting to get a little misty-eyed, she reached into her coat for her aviators. She was tired of feeling like this. She was tired of being torn. Mostly, she was just tired.

"But there's other factors at play here. I had to consider the safety of all those –"

Anxiously adjusting the beat-up shades, she drew as much strength as she could before cutting him off. "I love you."

He only hesitated a second, but it was long enough to rattle her. "You know I love you, too, darlin'. You're one of my dearest friends, but –"

His words were perfectly smooth as always. A deflection she wasn't going to tolerate this time. "No. No buts. No 'I love you, too' like it's nothing. Not as friends. Your indifference is fucking killing me. It's already cost me _so much_ when there was already so little of my life left, and I won't do this anymore…"

She had imagined this moment countless times. She had rehearsed the words over and over in her head, but somehow it hadn't come out as planned. Built up beyond the greatest of expectations, this huge, defining moment that felt like it would never actually happen was happening right now and passing with little fanfare. None of that seemed to matter at this point.

"…I love you, Jesse. I have for a very long time, and I want to make it absolutely clear I don't mean 'as a friend'. Do you understand? Say you understand what I just said."

With his gaze focused a million miles away, he parroted, "I understand."

"And now that I've said it out loud, you can no longer just pretend I don't or that you didn't know."

_There. I did it._

The silence between them would have been deafening if it weren't for the snippets of her owns words echoing in her head, begging to be overanalyzed. Her hands trembling, she distractedly searched for her cigarettes. Placing one in her mouth, she was still a visible wreck, unable to find her lighter.

After what felt like an eternity, she was startled back into the present by a soft click, and McCree brought a flame to the tip for her. His voice was just as soft as the click and warm as the glow of the flame. "Can we start over?"

Only after taking a moment to savor that first hit and finding a glimmer of her sanity did she acknowledge his query. "First, tell me something. And be completely fucking transparent with me."

"Shoot."

"Are you still in Overwatch?"

* * *

_Villains aren't born. They're made..._

After he was done stewing and kicking himself, Jamison had a renewed sense of purpose. Remembering exactly why he only ever relied on himself in the past – and maybe Mako from time to time – he decided he would just have to introduce the Goddess to the world himself.

Historically, that's what he always did in times of necessity. Need explosives? Learn to build bombs. Need a prosthetic? Learn bioengineering. Need to distribute a god-like computer virus on a mass scale? Learn how to hack the planet.

Need a wifey?

_That's why I built that hand, ah hahahah!_

However, becoming a Sombra-tier hacker was taking longer than expected, and the itch to blow something up was all-consuming and immensely vitiating. So in the meantime, he decided they should move on to the Wall Street phase of the plan, which was how he found himself overlooking New York City through floor-to-ceiling windows at the top floor of an older, slightly war-damaged building with growing anticipation when he heard his name.

"Jamie!"

He froze, fearing the depths of his insanity for the first time. _What fresh hell is this where the voices in my head sound like Cookie?_

"Junkrat, stop!"

He slowly depressed his thumb from the detonator, turning toward the voice.

It wasn't the Cookie he remembered. This one had shaggier hair, full-length pants, and a dark purple poncho draped gracefully over her curves. But it was definitely her.

"Don't do it!" she demanded, strolling his way in cowboy boots and spurs that jingled with every step. "We should talk first."

He growled. "What the _fuck_ makes you think I give a shit what _you_ have to say?"

"I don't blame you for being mad at me." Removing a pistol from a holster within the folds of the poncho and placing it on the floor, she put her hands out in front of her in a nonthreatening display and left the gun behind as she neared him.

His eyes slid half closed. "If you're here to collect on the things I said I want to do to you, I feel I should warn you, the nature of those acts changed." He nodded towards Roadhog, who was turning his meat hook menacingly, sparking light off of it. "But he'll still make good on his promise if you want."

"I know what I did was really shitty, and knowing then what I know now, I would take it back if I could. I've gone over it in my head a thousand times, analyzing it a thousand different ways, and if I hadn't initially been trying to fuck you over, I never would have gone along with you in the first place."

"So?"

"I care about you, Jamie. I really do. It sucks that I had to hurt you to find that out, but it wouldn't have happened otherwise. It had to happen that way."

"That's real sweet and all, but you're forgetting something."

"What's that?"

"I still hate your fucking guts!"

Roadhog interjected with a growl, but Junkrat held up a finger at him. "I got this, Hog." He turned back to Cookie. "I've thought about it a lot, too, actually. Wanna know what conclusion I came to? In spite of everything, I still missed you every second you were gone. It still hurts. I still keep feeling like it was somehow my fault, and I think I was right about my first theory."

"Which is?"

"…I love you."

She smiled wistfully. "Jamie –"

"But don't go dropping your panties just yet! When it's all said and done, it doesn't matter how much I think I love you. I still can't trust you. And it'll be a white Christmas in Junkertown before I make that mistake again!"

"I don't really expect you to forgive me right away –"

"It's been six months, Cookie."

"Oh. You've been counting."

"Six months, two weeks, and three days, technically."

She couldn't attest to the accuracy of his statement, but it was probably true, and the fact that he knew it in that much detail took her a little aback. That nagging itch in her arm started to surface.

"And you think you can just come here and say you're sorry? Like it's gonna mean something?"

While she anxiously palmed the bottle of pain pills in her pocket, his finger twitching over the detonator's trigger caught her eye. She shook the bottle out of her hand. "Would it mean something if I told you this plan is stupid? Blowing up all those buildings isn't going to accomplish anything."

"Yeah, it will." He raised the remote for all to see. "It's gonna make me feel better."

"We're still just talking, Jamie! Please don't push that button! There are innocent people down there."

"Fuck 'em! You think any of _them_ give a shit about _me_? Half of 'em don't know who I am, and the half that do would love to cash me in! They can rot in hell for all I care!"

"I came here because I want to help you!"

"Help me?! Like when you 'helped' me find Sombra by leading that bounty hunter right to us? You wanna help me by trying to steal my treasure?"

"I know it looks bad, but I had the best of intentions."

"You shouldn't have come here. You don't even see it, but what you're doing to me… You're just as selfish and bad as that Jesse bloke."

She shook her head, refusing to see any truth his dig. "I have an in on Overwatch…"

He laughed hysterically. "Now she's in _Overwatch,_ ha hah ha!"

"I'm serious!"

"Overwatch doesn't even exist anymore, ya dizzy cunt!"

"One of their agents issued a recall, and they have been operating underground for some time now."

"Suuure!"

"And I convinced them to allow you in. You'll have access to all their technology, all their bases all over the world…" Cookie took a cautious step towards him, but he moved backwards away from her and Roadhog lumbered between them.

"Don't come any closer!" He waved the remote over his head. "I'm through playing games with you!"

"It doesn't have to go down like this, Junkrat! You don't always have to be the bad guy! The world needs heroes, you can join Overwatch and –"

"You are so bloody fake all the time!" Fuming, he gave Roadhog a shove out of the way, storming towards her and getting in her face. "I'll have you know I'm _not_ the bad guy here..."

Her eyes flitted fearfully to the remote in his hand and back to his flaming eyes.

"… _You_ are!"

"Wait -!" She lunged for the detonator, but he tossed it to her like it was worthless. Instinctively, she caught it in a fumble, knowing he had already pushed it. With all bets off, they immediately abandoned their bickering and turned to see the carnage. There was a quiet moment where she thought it was all an elaborate prank, but a second later, the whole ground began to shake and rumble so massively, one could easily mistake it for an earthquake.

Endlessly satisfied with himself, all Junkrat's anger dissipated, replaced with euphoria as he watched all those suits' bread and butter come tumbling down. "I doubt your darling Overwatch will have anything to do with me, now," he remarked smugly.

"The world already hates them," she droned on, staring off into the blazing city. "It's not like you could really damage their reputation."

Explosions fire-balled out of distant buildings, falling, chunk by chunk, little by little, and an uncomfortably close one gave their vantage point an extra hard shake. Caught off guard, Cookie gasped, grabbing his real hand with hers in a panic.

Flesh on flesh, her touch lit him up further. He smirked, lacing their fingers. "Glad I could share this moment with you, Cookie."

The sky darkened with smoke, blotting out much of the sunlight, and the city skyline looked eerily empty as more buildings ducked down, forever out of view.

Still smiling, he snuck a glance at her, relishing the immense look of awe on her face. "It's beautiful, eh?"

"Goddammit, Jamie," she breathed out, more moved than she wanted to be. She was still torn up inside, but for all the wrong reasons, and she knew it.

"I still don't trust ya." Junkrat stepped behind her, draping his arms over her front. "But that just means I'll have to stay on my toes around ya …if we're gonna join Overwatch."

Roadhog shot him a look, lifting his mask to emphasize its asperity, but Junkrat ignored him, humming a tune to himself.

As the destruction died down and emergency sirens could be heard wailing in the distance, the three of them stood in reverence, watching the dust settle on the new landscape they had each had a hand in sculpting, one way or another.

Maybe things weren't so black and white. Maybe she wasn't as good as she thought. Maybe she should quit fighting it…

She successfully forced McCree out of her thoughts long enough to enjoy the moment, wishing it could last. But it wouldn't. Soon, authorities would be swarming the area, and they would be on the run, again.

Cookie leaned back into Junkrat's embrace with a bittersweet sigh.

On the run. With the Junkers. Sounded like home.


End file.
